One More Appointment

Today was the big trip down to TCH for the cardiologist. We ended up having the echo, so now that's out of the way for at least 2 years. Timing the entire day was awesome. We arrived in perfect time for the appointment and without waiting too long we were called back for sedation. Justin was tired, but he definitely knows when people are going to start messing with him. He didn't even like the pulse ox on his toe and that doesn't hurt at all! I was able to get the sedation medicine down without incident. I also learned that neither of my children are calmed by TV. Justin was all into Sesame Street, but after I turned it off and started singing he was out in less than 5 minutes.

The nurses in the echo area are fabulous. Our nurse had Justin's arms and legs all wrapped up in record time. The tech was great and Justin slept the whole time. The EKG tickled a bit so he woke up for that. And talk about drunk baby! It took all of my hands to keep him together since everything was flopping everywhere! He is pretty strong now so when he throws his head back I had better catch it or his whole body's gonna follow! We went straight into a room to wait for the cardiologist so after a bit I was able to get him back to sleep. And that worked well for her to listen to his heart in peace and quiet. Very unusual for him!

So basically what we are following is his mitral valve, since that was the one thing that didn't get fixed exactly the way they had hoped. The last echo showed minimal leakage, and this one showed moderate leakage. The doctor wasn't too worried though since she said that the machines are very sensitive to color variation and mild to moderate still doesn't cause concern. And she said there would have been some dilation in the left (?) side of his heart if there was a problem from the leakage, which there wasn't. So since he is having no symptoms and the echo looks fairly similar to last time, we are free for another year! And then it will just be a chest x-ray and office visit. So that should be the only sedated echo we have to do. Quite a relief! He did fabulous and fell asleep on the way home. The perfect appointment in my book!