Little man's heart

Brennan and I took our biannual trip to see our favorite heart doctor, Dr. Hashmi in Palm Springs today. I am always a bit apprehensive leading up to these appts. with the fear that we won't get the green light. They took us right in today and we headed straight for the EKG. Now usually Brennan is not super happy about being there, but today he did remarkably well. He fussed a bit during the EKG, but held super still. I think I might fuss too if you stuck 12 super sticky tabs no my chest and then ripped them off! Next onto blood pressures, height, and weight. He weighed in at 31 pounds! Then for the tough one, the echocradiogram, essentially an ultrasound of his heart. It is always a scary thing for him because the room is dark, he has to lay on the darn crinkly paper on the table and they move the wand over his chest for about 15 minutes. He did really well, fussing, but not moving much. Finally we saw Dr. Hashmi to go over all the results...his pulse rates, blood pressure, and EKG looked great. He didn't like the view he got during the echo of his actual aortic arch so he wanted to scan him again to get a better look. So back down to the echo room for a quick peek. Dr. Hashmi took all of 30 seconds to get a perfect picture of his arch and even I could see how wide open it was! He said his heart has not changed at all in the last year (no thickening of the archway) and his aortic valve is leaking a bit, but nothing to be concerned about. He said we will continue to watch both areas and worst case scenario, he will need a balloon catheterization when he grows bigger (5-10 years) and possibly some exercise limitations if his valve begins to leak more, no bodybuilding for our little man!

So the bottom line...we have one HEALTHY heart over here...so much so, that we don't have to go back for 9 more months!

Lots of love,
The Grady's