Busy Week

We got back into the swing of doctor appointments this week. Dylan went in to get his circumcision done on Tuesday, but the doctor decided not to do it. Then today we went up to Seattle to have another ECHO done on Dylan's heart, we met with his cardiologist following that, and then finally we met with a urologist. So here it goes with the findings:

Dylan weighed in at 8 lbs. 6 oz. today which means that he is growing at a good pace. He did fairly well during the ECHO. The last one that he had done in Utah was pretty rough for him. He fought the technician the whole time and it took them an hour to get the images that they needed. But today we managed to help him sleep through about two-thirds of the procedure, which made it much easier, quicker and less traumatic. The whole thing took about 30 minutes.

Our meeting with the cardiologist went well. She said that based on the ECHO and how he looks and sounds, she feels that we can wait a little longer before surgery will be necessary. His heart continues to do a good job getting enough oxygen to his body by compensating and working extra hard. We are grateful that this is the case. The doctor will be taking his info to a conference at Seattle Childrens' next week to talk about Dylan with the surgeons there and if all goes well, we should be scheduling his surgery for the beginning of June. The other bit of new info we got today was about an additional heart surgery. It looks like from the ECHO images that although they will be able to fix all 4 problems in June, he will need another surgery when he is an adolescent to do a valve replacement. This will be necessary because of the way his pulmonary artery is constricted. We will have to wait until he is big enough to put an adult-size valve in his heart. Until that surgery happens though, he will have a back-flow of blood because his current valve won't be big enough to completely close when they open up the artery. But hopefully he will not be affected too much by this as a growing child. He should be able to run and do active things like other kids and not get too fatigued.

Finally, we were very lucky to meet with the urologist while we were at Swedish today. He made a special exception to see Dylan since his circumcision appointment didn't go too well on Tuesday. Without going into too much detail here, he will need a special circumcision. That will be an additional operation where he will be under general anesthesia and will last anywhere between 30-40 minutes. But this operation we will hold off on until after he turns one and we can see how his heart is reacting to the first surgery.

So, I think that is all for this week. We have one more month of being confined to the house with Dylan. We are looking forward to May when we can do a bit more. But for now, we are just so thankful that this little guy is doing so well.

Here is Dylan trying out his new Bumbo seat, which we are very excited to have. I think he probably needs to grow into it!