Wednesday, July 20, 2011

A Healthy Heart Makes for a Happy Mom!

Today I took Reid to his annual check up for his heart.... he has had two heart surgeries in his little 4 year old life. One at 7 1/2 months and the other just before he turned 2.

The last surgery was to fix his leaking mitral valve...it had been repaired with the original surgery along with 2 holes in his heart but the valve was continuing to leak moderate to severely so needed another repair. For those of you that followed us through that repair you may remember that it was a bit touch and go and the threat loomed that a third surgery would be necessary to replace that valve altogether since the leakage continued to be severe shortly after surgery....

However, his last echocardiogram a year ago looked good with only mild to moderate amounts of mitral valve regurgitation and we were given the ok to now see the cardiologist once a year. Well, our year was up and for some reason I was particularly nervous this morning as I watched the technician measure different things on the screen during the echocardiogram and as I saw red and blue pumping through his valves, I worried that what she was seeing and measuring was indicating too much of a blood flow in the wrong direction. It's hard watching something and not knowing what the heck you are looking at... The only types of ultrasounds I like to look at are the ones where your Dr. tells you ... "See that little sac there, that's your baby growing big and strong" ....or "It looks like you are having a boy" lol!

...I held my breath as the Dr. came in to report out the results, waiting for a ball to drop, but the only thing that was dropped were the words, "I am pleasantly surprised that this echo actually looks even better than the one last year with now only trace to mild amounts of leakage...AND I am really pleased with his growth as Reid went from the 25-50th percentile on the Down syndrome growth chart to the 50-75th percentile". Could you hear me audibly exhale?.. umm, yes I do believe you could!! Yahooo... such good, good news!

So, needless to say a healthy heart makes for a happy mom today!!

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2 comments:

Adrienne said...

Yay!! Such wonderful news for a mom to hear! Reid is absolutely stunning! Love his glasses!

Becca said...

Great news!! I still hold my breath at those cardiology appointments, nearly 5 years later. Whew!! Can't believe how big he's getting - what a cutie! Love the glasses, too. :-)