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December 8, 2007
Today I took Nathan for an echo and an EKG. He tolerated the echo fairly well, only pulled off one monitor…. I had a cup of gold fish crackers and the tech played a Barney video and he managed to cooperate. But we had to abandon the EKG. The technician would get 3-4 clips on, he’d pull 2 off. She’d get 5 on and 4 would come off…screaming all the while! So, after about 30 minutes of this, we gave up. Nathan started to get sleepy, so we even turned the lights out and I recited “Goodnight Moon” thinking that maybe we could get him to fall asleep and then we could put the clips on. No luck. He’d get heavy eyes and then someone clip-clopped down the hall and those little eyes bugged open. I just said to forget it, maybe we’d try again in a few days.
During the echo, the technician asked me how big the ASD in Nathan’s heart was the last time we visited. It was .5mm. “Well,” she said, “It’s getting smaller. Now it’s only .33mm and I’ve never seen surgeons bother to fix a hole that small.”
Later this afternoon, the cardiologist called and declared that Nathan no longer needed to have the surgery (…or “intervention” as they call the procedure where a small device is inserted into the groin and fished up through a vein to the heart’s hole, then snapped around it to close the hole). We are absolutely thrilled that Nathan won’t have to endure even this less invasive procedure which has it’s risks. She also said that it was very unusual for the ASD to close at Nathan’s age…usually if a hole is going to close, it does before a child is a year old. So, I take this as a miracle!!
Perhaps the only surgeries that we have ahead of us are new ear tubes in six months and subsequently once every two years or so…not a big deal!
Well, Christmas is upon us and I’m feeling the pressure building up. Yes, there is money-making work to do, laundry, cleaning, all the regular stuff. But my real to-do list is this:
Go for a sled ride with Miika & Nathan
Bake cookies
Build a snowman
Get a tree and decorate it
Sit by the fire
Get those Christmas cards made and sent
Wrap the presents
Oh, and I guess a little more shopping…uggh