Cardiology Appointments

On top of last week being 1 year, we also had to make a trip up to the hospital.  Twice.  The first trip was hard.  This hasn't been the first trip up since Tin Man passed away, and won't be the last, but it was the day before the 1 year mark.

Both kids had cardiology appointments on Tuesday.  Sugar Pea's appointment went as expected, ekg, echo, check up, doctor asking how she's doing, if she has gotten a boyfriend since we last saw him, and then him telling us everything looks the same and he will see her in 6 months.  I didn't know what to expect with Warrior.  He had the ekg, echo, and seen the doctor.  Doctor said other than the PFO, his heart is structurally sound, but that the PFO wouldn't be causing the chest pains, so heordered an exercise test (exercise ekg) to see if his heart is doing anything weird while he exercises.  The chest pains have happened a few time while he is resting, but they seem to me more often while he exercises.

Warrior got to watch Tom and Jerry during his echo.

 Sugar Pea got to watch Shake It Up during her's.  Wish I got this kind of treatment.

While we were there we one of Tin Man's doctors made the time to come see us and talked with us for almost 20 minutes.  He even told us that he was the doctor reading the echos that day so he would take extra care with theirs.  He said it was the least he could do since he failed Tin Man (I do not and never will believe the doctors failed him)

Everyone was telling us that the doctor was having a hard time dealing with Tin Man's death and he was so excited he got to see us.  The last time we were up there he was on vacation so we didn't get to see him.

On Thursday we had to go back up for Warrior's exercise test. 

First was the breathing test.  He was not a fan of this at all.

 Says he's rocking the ekg leads.

 Time to start running.

We are still waiting to hear back with the results.  I called Thursday morning to see if the results were in but they are still waiting for another doctor to read the results and then they will get back to me.  Not sure if this is good or bad.

Cardiology Appointment

On Friday we had Warrior's appointment with the cardiologist.  In September he started conditioning for lacrosse, which included lots of running and weight lifting.  In November after running for 40 minutes he told his coach that he was having chest pains and shortness of breath.  The coach blew it off as him not cooling down long enough after running.

So of course Warrior didn't tell me because he didn't want to worry me.  Then during Christmas break he was having problems breathing after walking up some stairs.  As soon as we got home we went to the doctor.  She referred him to a cardiologist.  This made me nervous because we had to fight with her to get a referral to a gastric specialist a couple years ago.

I wanted to get him in to see one of Tin Man's doctors, but earliest they could get us in was in March.  Since Warrior playing lacrosse depended on what the cardiologist said, I had to give in and schedule an appointment with the local one.

After EKG and an echo, he told us that Warrior has a hole in his heart.  Called Patent Foramen Ovale.  Its about 4mm in size.  He said between its size and that Warrior is having symptoms we can't ignore it, but just monitor it right now.  He did sign off on letting Warrior play lacrosse, but only because he's the goalie, so he doesn't do much except stand there.

He did tell him he's not allowed to run a lot and he has to listen to his body.  If he starts having any more chest pains, shortness of breath, or the irregular heart beats, then he's supposed to let me know right away so I can call and make an appointment for him so we can set him up with a holter monitor to find out what else is going on.

Warrior after the EKG removing the stickers.  He wasn't to thrilled that he had to lay under a poster of spiders.

 

During the echo.  Before doing the echo Dr. T asked Warrior what he wanted to be and Warrior told him a cardiothoracic surgeon.  So Dr T. gave him a step by step walk through of the echo and showing him the different chambers and the blood flow.  

Close up of the Warrior's heart.

I am still planning on taking him to the doctor at Stanford, just as a 2nd opinion to calm my nerves.