Doing Some Tests.....

On Wednesday we noticed Alyson was continually breathing fast. The cardiologists have told us many times to look at her outward appearance to determine how she was doing instead of relying on any monitors. As of right then, she looked just fine and seemed to be doing okay but I said that if she kept doing it through the night and into the next day I was going to call them to see what they thought.

Alyson had a scheduled nurse come to our house and while she was there Alyson started to retract when she was breathing. This means that she was pulling so hard to breath her skin was pulling in around her breast bone and her ribs so you could see all them. Also while she was there Alyson threw up (which is somewhat normal for her) and started to turn gray and blue in color. The nurse suggested what we already knew....either take her to SLC or go to the pediatrician. We got her into the pediatrician and her oxygen levels were in the low 70's and even got into the high 60's at times. We went to the hospital to get some blood work done, an RSV swab done, and an x-ray done to check for heart failure and heart size.

All blood work turned out fine, the RSV swab came back negative, and the x-ray showed that there was not really any change in her heart size from the last time we were in SLC. Below is a picture of her x-ray. I always find her x-rays so fascinating when I see them. Instead of me describing what it looks like I posted a picture from yesterday so you can see what it looks like too!!!

12/4/08 x-ray: Around the middle of Alyson's chest you can see white circles. These are the wires they used to close her rib cage from her open heart surgery. Down the middle of her body you can see her feeding tube that goes off to the right on the bottom of the x-ray. Lastly, you can see her heart which is a gray/white circle mass in the middle of her chest.