Heart Check

Tuesday was Gabe's 3 month cardiologist appointment.

Like always, I was nervous.

I know that's sort of unnecessary since he is obviously doing fine, but he's been getting short of breath a lot and he doesn't seem to be growing and just the night before I read about a HLHS baby that passed away.  My nerves were running and I wasn't having much success reigning them in.

We ended up running late that morning.

I was trying to get Josie to her friends house and make sure Gabe's out of control hair was semi presentable.  We walked out the door a full 30 minutes later than planned.  Let's add some stress on top of the nerves.

Then, when we finally got to the cardiologist's office, they told us they were switching from a paper system to a computer based system and that things were running a little behind.  Nice since we were also running a little behind, not nice since I had an amped up 2 year old that had pretty much decided he didn't want to cooperate.

"Me no like Doctor.  Sheeee meeeeaan!" on repeat.

He was a stinker the whole time.

He's a pro at the order of these appointments and would wiggle and jiggle just at the wrong time with a little smirk on his chubby face.

I kept my cool.

Even when he decided to eat a cereal bar off the floor.

We past the waiting time giggling together and it was not too unbearable.

And after all the stats were collected and reviewed we saw the doctor for all of 5 minutes.

And hearing her say that Gabe is doing spectacular made the whole harried morning worth it.

His Oxygen was still in the 80's (83) and he gained 3 whopping pounds.  He grew another inch and his blood pressure was in an acceptable range.

We ended up not needing to get an ECHO done (Thank God!), but she restated that his last ECHO showed slight improvement in his heart function (the amount it squeezes blood out to his body).

She even said that if he keeps up these good stats, the Fontan is an option!

The Fontan isn't a cure, but it would buy us more time and hopefully allow for medicine to make new developments, before he needs a transplant.

Overall, she said that he is doing too well to talk about any interventions.  The Fontan would increase his Oxygen to around 90 and it's not really worth a big surgery just to gain 5 points.  So we are just going to keep doing what we are doing and hope that his body keeps compensating.

It was an awesome appointment!

I'm still requesting all his charts and sending them to Boston.  I figure there's no hurt in having another set of eyes check it all out.  That will take a few months before we know if anything will come of it.

Right now, we are just celebrating our little boy's heart and getting ready for his third birthday!