Check-ups in Seattle

Dylan had a big day up in Seattle this last week. He had an ECHO done on his heart, then we met with his cardiologist, and finally we met with his urologist.

I knew that the ECHO was going to be a challenge. Just imagine what it would be like to get an almost 2 year old to lay quietly for 45 minutes on a hospital bed while the ultrasound tech gets very precise images with a probe on his chest. If you imagined some sort of stressful experience with lots of crying and screaming and the almost 2 year old trying to escape, then you know what I was anticipating. I had heard months ago that if kids do not cooperate at this age, then the doctors have to put the kid to sleep to get the ECHO done. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid, but didn't know if we would be able to. As soon as I took Dylan' shirt off and tried to lay him on the bed, he had a death grip on me and started screaming. This boy has a pretty good memory for things that he doesn't like. Once I got him on the bed I had to hold both of his arms down so that he didn't push the probe away. But thankfully, the tech was good with him and put a Winnie the Pooh movie on right away hoping this would help to distract him. After a couple minutes of struggling, Dylan calmed down and watched the movie. I was so thankful for that! And every time he would start complaining about the probe, the tech would start talking to Dylan about the movie and keep him calm. At the end of it, I was amazed that Dylan had made it through a full 45 minutes and I felt so thankful to Heavenly Father for this tender mercy. 

We then headed up to the cardiologist's office and went in for that appointment. Dylan was not in the mood for anyone else strange to touch him, so he protested during the measuring, weighing and blood pressure taking. But we were happy to hear from his cardiologist that his heart looks good! There used to be a small leak where the surgeons had put a patch over the hole in his heart. But it seems that his heart has closed this leak on its own. He still has a moderate back flow of blood in the pulmonary artery because the valve does not shut all the way when the heart beats. But the heart murmur that is created by this back flow is not any louder than it used to be. Everything that the surgeons repaired seems to be holding and growing along with his heart. So we were very happy with this report. We have officially reached a milestone with Dylan's heart.....we are now on the check-up once a year schedule, which is the schedule that Dylan will maintain throughout his life to make sure that his heart is okay.

And lastly, we went to see the urologist to make sure that everything from Dylan's previous surgery healed up the way it should and to see if he needed any more operations. Good news here too! He looks great and we can now officially cross the urologist off of our list of doctors that Dylan gets to see. Hooray!

So all in all, a good day, but a long and exhausting one.

This boy is now getting around and getting into everything. He's brimming with personality and opinions and is changing so much every day. We are so happy with all of the progress that he's making!