Cardiology Update

Today's cardiology visit-specifically today's echocardiogram-was a serious labor of love.  By that, I mean, it was a wrestling match.  And by that, I mean it was a loooooong 90 minutes.  Goodness gracious.  Trying to get a 14 month to sit still long enough to get 83 shots of various parts of his heart is just not an easy task, regardless of how many goodies are stashed in the diaper bag.

So with that being said, the echo tech (whom I love) managed to get all the pics she needed except for one of James' descending aorta.  It is always hard for her to get this pic anyway, she usually has to go right under James' chin, which means he has to be somewhat arched back, and he has to hold still.  It was not happening today.  Thankfully, all of his blood pressures were good, which indicates his aorta is doing great-that was enough for Dr. Garn.  His aortic valve still looks "gnarly", in Dr. Garn's words.  BUT, while his gradient was 47 last time (remember, higher is bad), his gradient through that valve this time was 30 at its highest.  This means the median gradient was even lower than that.  Dr. Garn says James keeps proving science wrong-while the anatomy is terrible, the physiology is adjusting and at this point in time, that valve is functioning better and better.  It prompts a slew of thoughts, honestly-gratitude the most predominant one of course, but hope is in there too.  But what can I hope for?  That James never has to have that valve replaced?  We've never hoped for that, we have always known it would need to be replaced at some point.  But he keeps getting better and better.  I don't know if that's enough of a reason to hope that, at a future visit, Dr. Garn will tell us it now looks and functions normally.  I have some research to do, and at this point, I am just going with gratitude.

Dr. Garn did see a very slight potential issue with James' mitral valve, leading into his left ventricle. The blood began to flow faster as it approached the mitral valve, which is not normal and suggests a potential issue.  Now, at this point, he said there is no cause for concern, that's how slight the increase in speed was.  He just wanted me to know it is something they will watch in the future.  It may have just been that James was getting agitated during the echo. Or it could be a legitimate issue, which would not be uncommon for a child who already has CHD.  We'll keep an eye on it either way.

With that appointment down, we don't need to go back to the cardiologist for 6 more months-our longest time span yet.  When we do go back, we'll just do an EKG rather than an echo since the echo is just hard to do at this point.  If the EKG indicates issues, we'll try an echo at the office, or Dr. Garn may just send us to the hospital to do an echo with sedation (which I would honestly opt for given how difficult the echo was today).

We are super grateful for today's updates-what a wonderful thing prayer is.  We know the Lord is watching out for James.  Great news.