Clean Bill of Health

It's been a busy week as far as doctor's appointments go. Miles had appointments both Monday and Tuesday. Ben had appointments both Tuesday and Wednesday, and I had an appointment on Tuesday, and I have another one today. Man, that's a lot of co-pays. Luckily, we've become very good at keeping receipts because you can bet that we meet the minimum to claim medical deductions on our taxes. I'm actually looking quite forward to our meeting with our accountant in a couple weeks. I think that we should have a pretty decent return in our future. Hopefully, that means new carpet upstairs too. (thanks to Ben's bonus and a good month, the basement carpet is already on its way)



What were all of these appointments for, you ask? Well, we'll start with the person that you're the most interested in. On Monday, Miles had his six month check-up with his cardiologist. I've got to admit, that I've really been gearing up for something awful. After his last hospital stay, the doctors made it sound like another surgery was pretty imminent. I don't think that I was just taking this alone into consideration, but I really felt like something serious was coming. Boy was I surprised and a little confused when dr. Puchalski said that Miles sounded great. He said that his blood pressure was really good. There was no disparity between that of his arm and his leg. If his coarc had returned, there would be very little pressure in his legs. In actuality, his blood pressure was even better in his legs than his arms. Dr. Puchalski did say that perhaps what the other doctors were hearing was his "regular" murmur. He said that there is still a heart murmur present, but it's a healthy murmur, if that makes sense. He said that it will get louder when Miles is sick, and maybe the other doctors were mistaking that for worsening problems. I think that he may have actually been a little confused by their concerns because everything sounded great.



Dr. Puchalski did think that it would be prudent to schedule an echo to check up on other issues that may not manifest themselves in blood pressure readings and through a stethoscope alone. I told him, half joking but really hopefully, that I had to come back the next day for a fetal echo, "so if there's any way you could squeeze him in too, that would be awesome". I got a fantastic response. "Really? I'm actually doing the fetal echos tomorrow. Yeah. I think that I can arrange that". Perfect. I hadn't been able to find a babysitter for Miles, so that solved that problem.



Because Miles is too little to really understand the whole stay still thing, he does have to be completely sedated for echocardiograms. He has to fast in the morning to prevent any aspirating while sedated. Miles sure doesn't love that. It's kind of hard when all he wants is a bottle, and I can't give him anything. Luckily, they do their best to schedule sedated echos early in the day. Miles was actually really good while we were waiting. He got a little upset when the IV was administered, but who wouldn't be? The sedative took affect really quickly, and Miles only started to come through a little bit once during the echo. Just long enough to say "hi" in a really creepy voice to the tech and try to grab the little ultrasound thing and say "no" in that same creepy voice.

After about a 45 minute echo, it was time to try to wake Miles up and take him to the post-op area to come out of the sedation more completely. He had a little bit of a hard time coming out of the sedation. I wasn't at all worried about it though because Miles has never been an easy person to wake up. He's worse than Ben. He wakes up great on his own but does not love being woken up. He became much more lucid in the post-op area after drinking the majority of a Sprite a whole cup of apple juice and watching Little Einsteins.



We finished up there just in time for me to go to my fetal echo. Meantime, Miles and my mom went across the hall to play in the playroom. It's Miles new favorite place to play. There wasn't any real cause in ultrasounds or anything for me to have the fetal echo, but when Miles was first diagnosed with heart disease, we were strongly advised by Dr. Puchalski to be sure to come to Primary for an ultrasound if we were to have more children. There is a small increased chance, about 5% that a child will have heart disease if another in the family does. Obviously, we want to be as safe as possible. Particularly, because Miles coarc really should have been detected pre-birth, we wanted to take every precaution. About halfway through the echo, Dr. Puchalski came in to tell me that he was about halfway through reviewing Miles' echo, and so far, so good. At the finish of mine, the tech went to get Dr. Puchalski to review and do any further "investigation" that he may want to do on his own. He came in and said that he finished with Miles' echo, and it was clean. His mitral valve and other little problems looked the same as they did 6 months ago. Nothing had changed. The fetal echo, too, came up great. There's nothing to be immediately concerned about. The doctor explained that, of course, technology can take you only so far. There can be tiny holes that a fetal echo may not detect. Once Henry is born, if there is any abnormalities with his heartbeat or anything, certainly we'd come back, but everything is looking great right now.



Well, that takes care of two and a half out of five appointments. Now we'll continue on to Ben. Ben's had a really rough past couple of months. He has just been sick all the time. He has a problem with migraines, but until about two months ago, it had been under control for quite a while. Recently, they've returned with a vengeance. Some of the worst he's ever had. It's particularly tough because he works an hour away from home, so if a migraine comes on while he's at work, he is totally SOL. He's been to the doctor out here a couple of times, but as Ben has always said (and I now agree after attending a recent appointment with him) doctors do not take migraines seriously. I told him that I really thought that he needed to find a specialist. He decided to go back to a doctor in Sandy that I think he'd been seeing before we got married. He basically just went in for a physical, but did discuss the long-term sickness. The doctor suspected (as Ben kind of had) that some medicine that he'd been taking to help regulate his sleeping was making him sick and possibly even causing the migraines. So, he just needed to lose that one.



He also wanted him to come back the next morning for a CT. That's what I was really hoping for. I guess I always kind of have the worst case scenario in my head, and I just really wanted to make sure that there wasn't something deeper causing the problems. I just needed that out of my head. Thankfully, I got a call this morning with his results. Everything was great, but I was instructed to tell Ben that he needed to make an eye appointment. There are some issues with his right eye that can also be causing problems. I think that Ben already knows that though. I'm pretty sure that that's why he wears contacts. I'll still pass on the message. It's been almost a year since his last eye appointment anyway.



So, there's our busy medical week. Oh wait. I still have one more today. No big deal. I just need some regular prescription refills, and I don't really have a primary care physician right now, so I just made a new patient check-up for today. Also, I was super super sick yesterday. I'm pretty sure that Ben got me sick. I'm sure it's just a little virus, but if there's something I can take to help all the congestion and what not, that would be fantastic. Anyway, that appointment is in about an hour, so I better get ready to go.



That is actually our busy medical week. I'm still waiting for some terrible news. It's been very confusing to have everything go well when I was so expecting bad results. My sister told me that it was probably just because I am so used to catastrophe, I don't know how to accept a clean bill of health. I do hope that everything really is good. Anyway, we've had too many doctor's visits. Hopefully, that will cover the month of March. Pretty high hopes since it's only the 4th though.