Mr.'s First Health Scare

Remember me?


It's been a while and now I have the daunting task of playing catch up on my blog.

I'll start with our first little health scare with Mr. Mason -

Disclaimer: this is long, and probably overly detailed, but I am documenting it since I don't journal

It started out in the hospital when he was first born that the pediatrician heard a faint "swooshing" in Mason's heart. She wanted to see him 2 days after we left the hospital and she still heard it so she set up an appointment for us to go see the cardiologist at Primary Children's. The soonest appointment was about 2 weeks out - in which we saw our pediatrician again for Mason's 2 week check-up. At this checkup she felt like she really couldn't hear anything and any hole must have closed up.

Fast forward to his 2 month appointment - and she thought she heard it again - so it was back to the original plan of seeing someone up at Primary's.

The thought of having to go to the hospital with our little baby was more than a little frightening. I tried to not let it seem to serious in my mind, and hoped for the best case scenario.

So on we headed up to the hospital (which was back on July 17th - ya, I'm a little behind) and I was surprisingly calm - it helped that Cameron was able to come with me, and I just felt like things would work out.

We got checked in, waited for a while (although not too bad considering what you can wait at a hospital), and then got settled into a room. The nurse hooked up mason to about 900 wires for the EKG (or whatever medical acronym) - he looked like a little octopus or something.

Next she tried to get his blood pressure - they had the cutest little blood pressure cuff that was so tiny. Not surprisingly, my little man was too fidgety for her to get a good reading - it took her about 10 tries before she just gave up.

Then came the waiting. We had to wait for the cardiologists to look at whatever the nurse did before coming in. Once they came in (the cardiologist and the student doctor), they listened to his heart, talked amongst each other at what they heard (it was very Grey's Anatomy with the head doctor asking the intern to explain what he heard, how he would diagnose it, etc.). Then after they listened, they called in the head cardiologist to get his opinion as well.

They were optimistic with what they heard, were confident that it would close up within in the next year and I was starting to think that this was so much easier than I anticipated.

That's where I was wrong.

They wanted to confirm what they thought and do an ultrasound. They were backed up in the ultrasound room, so we had to wait some more.

Once we were up for the ultrasound we walked do a dark room and handed over our baby. The nice (albeit a little crazy) man took our baby and bundled him all up in blankets. Now this sounds nice, but he swaddled Mason's arms behind his back and then positioned his body with his legs a little in the air. I'm sure I was more upset with this than Mason, as he didn't seem to mind it.

We then sat there watching Sherlock Holmes as Mason had his chest looked over for about 30 minutes. About half way through he started to not like it so much, and as we were in a very "anti-pacifier" mode, failed to have anything on hand to calm him down - and apparently they need complete calmness while they do the ultrasound. So the guy told me to just let him suck on my finger while he finished up. Awesome.

He finished up, said he needed the doctors to look at it and he would be right back. But you know how "be right back" goes at a hospital and even when he did get back he needed to get more images.

Once we were done there, we were taken to a consult room to wait for the doctors to review the ultrasound and give us a final diagnoses.

So, after just a little more waiting, we were consulted and told that it was exactly as they thought. It was just a tiny hole on the lower-something-or-other (who understands medical speak anyways) of his heart and that they were so confident that it would close up that they don't even need to see Mason again.

All in all, I would have to say that is the best outcome.

Mason was such a champ through it all - I don't know how we got such a good baby.