Our little guy, Aidan, had a his regular 6-month checkup with his cardiologist, Dr. Frommelt at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. His checkup was great though he was a bit of a pill. He wouldn't allow them to do an echo and really had issues with giving blood. We have a small change for one of his blood thinners which has always been hard to regulate. He's on Coumadin and eating foods with Vitamin K can interfere with its effectiveness. Aidan loves broccoli so this can cause troubles. We try to make sure he has it regularly and the same quantities but he is only 3 so it is hard to control.
Aidan has Hypoplastic Right Heart and had 4 heart surgeries (2 open-heart) in his first 3 years with the last one being almost a year ago. He really is doing fabulous and despite his fear of echos and giving blood, charms everyone during his visits. They are so kind and wonderful at Children's Hospital that it makes visiting the hospital easier.
I always get anxiety before these appointments as you never know when life will throw you for a loop so I feel much better today now that it is behind us. Next checkup is in November.
As not everyone might appreciate the first picture, after the jump is a picture of Aidan when we brought him home from the hospital last year. He wasn't quite 3 yet.
Aidan last year and a couple weeks ago.
Tonight I was reading your blog and when I came across your little sweetie Aidan and his pictures, it brought to mind 40 years ago May 6, 1967 I was almost 20, I had my first Son, Gary. He was born w/o a soft spot in his skull, at 2 1/2 Months old they said he would need surgery, the Neurosurgeon performed a craniectomy on him...they cut the bone from temple to temple and took out a good section of his skull and replaced with a thin tape that would allow his brain and skull to continue to grow and would eventually close like a normal soft spot would. This small babe just turned 40 last month and the only thing of that nightmare to me that remains is a scar which you can't tell because of his hair. There were alot of trips to the hospital for x-rays over a 5 year period to make sure everything was okay...and of course he couldn't bump his head..my-my-my, as I'm sure you know you can't stop them from playing. Before he started kindergarten we took a visit back to Dr. Schoolman, who was his neurosurgeon, for a final check up. Every thing was good and there weren't any learning disabilities or motor skill function problems, they really didn't know what caused this. I was also afraid to have another one, but I did and had an amniocentesis done to check everything and #2 son, Scott, was perfect as was #3 son, Patrick 12 years later, who I had at 35. They are all precious wards when we have them and it's between us and the good graces of God to get them grown. Hang in there guy's these little one's are tough!
Posted by: Linda Copeland | June 11, 2007 at 07:16 PM
that's fabulous! yay for a good appointment! what a cutie he is.
Posted by: nyjlm | May 07, 2007 at 02:57 PM
These pictures really bring home how well he is doing! He is certainly our strong litlle guy!!
Posted by: Mom | May 05, 2007 at 09:10 AM
What awesome news!!! So glad to see things are peachy!
I worry about Knittybaby's next echo. He first three he was little enough thst it wasn't too bad. For the next one in January he'll be 20 months. Not a prime age for an echo.
Posted by: knittymama | May 03, 2007 at 08:37 PM