Medical Month

I am hereby declaring January medical month.  We had two appointments at Primary's during the last week of December and this week I have already been there twice and we have more scheduled.

Appointment #1 Sedated Echo

This appointment went pretty well.  Ammon had a mini physical to make sure he was fit for sedation and then they put an IV in him.  Ammon has had a GAZILLION IVs.  During his last hospital stay it took them f-o-r-e-v-e-r to put one in because he was out of usable veins (remember the head IVs?).  Apparently he has healed up nicely because the IV team got it in on the first try! In his hand! I have NEVER seen that happen with Ammon before!  I was floored and quite honestly that nurse is super lucky that she got out of there without a gigantic hug-attack by his a crazy happy mother.

Watching Ammon get sedated was so-SOOOO much fun!  She gave him the versed first which, of course, made him loopy and smiley and just plain silly.  He was on my lap when she pushed it through and turned around about 30 seconds later and gave me the HUGEST grin I have ever seen :)  She gave him two additional drugs and he calmed down a bit, but WOULD NOT hold still.  Whenever she pushed more drugs his oxygen stats would plummet and they would have to mask him for 10-20 seconds until he decided to breathe again. After quite some time one of the nurses pronounced that she had pushed all the drug she was allowed to push.  Ammon was trying to sit up so the two of them held him down while the tech worked as fast as he could.

After spending some time in recovery we went to see Dr. Puchalski.  He was SUPER happy. He said as soon as the first image popped up on the screen he knew there was good news.  Ammon's function has actually IMPROVED since his second surgery and the valve that was leaking is no longer leaking - yay! His oxygen saturation is still a little low, however so he will go to the cath lab at the end of the month to have his aorta ballooned.  They will also take a closer look at the stent in the LPA and probably balloon that as well.  Not a huge deal - just maintenance :)

Appointment #2 Dysphagia

What a whirlwind. First the nurse took Ammon's food journal (I had to record every single crumb that entered his mouth for three days). Then the nutritionist came in, asked a million questions and set up a new diet for him (changed his formula to another specialty formula that is milk-based to see if he has outgrown the milk allergy - which he appears to have done) and said he doesn't need the extra vitamins anymore. Then the GI doc came in.  She asked a bazillion questions, examined Ammon and suggested a G-Tube.  She said there are three types of patients who end up in her clinic.  Heart patients, kidney patients, and I forgot the other. She scheduled an upper GI barium study (I thought they were going to scope him, but I confused the upper GI with the G-tube insertion), and put him on periactin to increase hunger (periactin happens to be an anti-histamine so he gets it at nap time and bedtime and it might just help him sleep better!). Then the occupational therapist came in to discuss speech therapy.  She said all of the same things Shelly (regular speech therapist) has been telling us for weeks. Ammon HAS to eat on a very strict schedule. and no snacks or additional fluids in between. They are trying to teach them what hunger means. And we continue to watch him closely.

Sometime in the middle of all of that they started musical rooms and came and went continuously for two hours and they gave me further instructions. Then they sent in the psychiatrist.  You had to know that was coming.  During the GI doc's Q&A period she asked me all about the pregnancy and I told her. She was shocked and concerned.  I assured her that it was over a year ago and it really wasn't horrible at all, but she was still concerned that I would have to go through such an ordeal.  You know if Heavenly Father just converted the entire staff at PCMC then they would all get the calming, understanding assurance of the Holy Ghost and people would stop sicking the psychiatrist on me.

It only took the psychiatrist five minutes to decided that I was handling my life in an acceptable manner and she left. phew. I wonder if she could write up a report and pass it out for me? Just kidding.

Appointment #3 ENT

Ammon has had 4 ear infections since October. Sometimes one ear, but mostly both.  Usually an infant or toddler needs to have 6-8 in one year for the ENTs at Primary's to concider tubes, but not in Ammon's case.  The ENT was SUPER nice.  He said while tubes are definitely not a must with Ammon (yet) he would suggest putting them in Ammon's ears because the heart patients he sees tend to get sicker and more miserable than usual with the infections.  I concur.  (not that I would know, the girls have never had an ear infection). So we talked about it and his biggest concern was anesthetizing Ammon.  It seems to be a VERY common concern.  I am going to have to ask why, but they DO NOT like to put heart patients to sleep any more than absolutely necessary.  In light of that we have to combine as many procedures into one as we can.  And since NOTHING can be combined with any procedure in the cath lab, the other three (G-tube + tubes + circumcision) need to be done at the same time.  Try coordinating THAT.

Appointment #4 Barium study

Quick and easy.  Everything went well (except the part where Ammon refused to drink the barium and screamed like a banchi and they squirted it in his mouth with a syringe and in his rebellion he let it drip slowly out of the side of his mouth).  But they got it done and everything is normal (no reflux) and anatomy is all normal and in the right place for a G-tube. Yay.  Except with the funny rules for anesthetizing a heart patient we are not allowed to do any putting to sleep for one month AFTER the heart cath. (Two months, if for some crazy reason they install more hardware during the cath). Sooo that brings us nearly to the end of cold season and negates the needs for tubes.

Coincidentally, John ran into one of he PCMC heart surgeons at the hospital this week.  Dr. Kaza is the nicest ever.  He asked about everyone and everything and told John the cath lab is definitely nothing to worry about - pretty common stuff.  And he said 3/4 of the heart kids with stuff stimilar to what Ammon has end up with G-tubes.  That was nice....so now, 

Nothing else until the 20th!!!

Post note that no one really cares about: While Allie, Ammon, and I were waiting for John after the barium study I got to sneak down to the Pottery Barn and pick out my birthday present!!!!!!!!!! Ooooh, I am going to be so excited! Do you know that the ladies at the Pottery Barn will actually let you use one of their couches to try out couch pillows?  You can rearrange and rearrange until you mess up the whole place, and they don't even care! Ahhhhhh. This is what my texting with John went like from the inside of that stylish spendapalooza:

Suzi "I may have stumbled into heaven"
John "Say hi to Heavenly Father and Jesus for me"
Suzi "I'm pretty sure they would like it here, except they would slash the mark-up so everyone could partake"
John"Did you find some pillows to buy?"

Was that OK to post?

It was better than our previous texting conversation about me being pulled over by a policeman and Allie BAWLING because mommy was going to get a ticket.  I did not get a ticket.

After the Pottery Barn we went back to Primary's to finishing waiting for John in the playroom.  It was music time! Super cute.