Alyson's 1 Year Cardiology Appointment

Yesterday (August 31) we went to PCMC for Alyson's 1 year check-up with her cardiologist. Everything went great and he is so happy with how she is doing. He was excited to see her off her feeding tube too! YAY!!! She was a little congested when we went down there so I was wondering if her chest x-ray would look alright...and it did. He said that her lungs looked clear and her heart looked pretty much looked like a normal heart chest x-ray. I sat in the waiting room with Olivia so she could eat breakfast so I didn't get to see the pictures of the x-rays being taken this time. If you click here you can see one of her old x-rays and how large her heart used to be. The big white circle mass is her heart which is much larger than what a normal heart would be in a baby her age. I think after having the Glenn surgery in February it helped things flow a lot better in her heart so it didn't have to work so hard and it started to decrease in size again. She was taken off of her diuretic (Lasix) so we will watch her for a few days to watch for puffiness in her face. If she doesn't do so well, we will start it back up. If she does good...we are down to 5 medications now! I asked if she will be on Enalapril (helps blood pressure and squeeze of the heart) for the rest of her life and he said that she probably will be because of her leaky valves unless those ever get any better. He mentioned nothing of stopping her arrhythmia medication so we're still on that for who knows how much longer so she can "self-wean" (medication dose stays the same even though she is gaining weight) herself off of it. We are so blessed that she is doing so well! Our next appointment with him is 6 months out so we know she has to be doing good if he doesn't want to see her for that long. Either that or he's sick of us already! :)

Current 1 Year Stats

Weight: 16lbs 10 oz (8lbs 14oz at birth)

Length: 28.75 inches (20.5 inches at birth)

I also made several thank-you notes for Alyson's cardiologist, surgeons and the PICU along with her most recent picture. I wanted to tell them thank you for the care they provided to her and dedication because she would probably not be here with us today without them! Below is a picture of Alyson and her cardiologist. He has been with us in our journey since I was 23-24 weeks pregnant with Alyson. We LOVE him and I couldn't ask for a better Dr. for her!

Alyson and her cardiologist (8/31/09)

Here is a shirt that I had made for Alyson that she wore to her check-up. Her cardiologist LOVED it. He asked before we left to have it emailed to him. After I had this made (I'm still waiting on the other designs to be done) I had an idea to start selling them and donating the proceeds after my costs to PCMC. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do or what price I should ask for them. Any price point suggestions you all have would be great! Alyson's cardiologist mentioned there is a heart walk on 9/12 so I could set up a booth there and see what kind of response again. But there is a dilema...Frank's company party is that day! I'm going to the party but I do want to start doing those heart-walks in the future.

"My Cardiologist ROCKS!!!"