Monday, January 31, 2011

An update

"In this world you will have trouble, but be brave! I have defeated the world!" ~ John 16:33

Saturday morning found us concerned about Caroline. Her cardiologist warned us early about signs that her heart was failing . . . Trouble eating, sweating when she was eating, increased irritability. By Saturday morning, these things had been happening for a couple of days. On top of that, she was having episodes where she would get inconsolably upset for no apparent reason, would turn bluish purple and would seemingly pass out. This had actually been happening for a while but the episodes were getting closer and closer together.

We called our on-call nurse who in turn called the doctor and suggested that we call our cardiologist. Both doctors wanted us to come back to Dell right away.

We dropped the boys off at my sister's and away we went - packed for a week, just in case.

When we got to the hospital, Jesse went in to register us while Caroline and I stayed in the car. We try to keep her away from as many germs as possible and a children's emergency room, as you know, is full of them. When I came in, there were probably 50 people waiting to been seen in front of us. Unfortunatly (or maybe fortunately), Caroline started having an episode (screaming, coughing, turning blue, not breathing) as soon as we entered. They rushed us immediately back.

The nurse said to me, "Is she normally that pale?" "No", I replied, "She's usually more pale than this!" I think that startled her a little bit.

They immediately started an IV, drew blood for tests, did an ecocardiogram, and an xray. None of these tests showed anything particularly alarming but they decided they wanted to keep us overnight.

The doctor Sunday morning was concerned that her symptoms were being caused by her pulmonary hypertension and was going to talk to the cardiologist about doing her heart repair during this stay.

Her on-call cardiologist did not want to do anything - no change in meds, no catheterization, no repair. He thought that she was still to small and he saw no reason to chance it. Her regular cardiologist decided that it would be a waste of a trip to not at least do the catheterization. So, this morning, she had the procedure done. She went back at 7:30 and we were told that it would be about a 30 minute procedure. At about 8:30 we got a call that they just made it to her heart - they had trouble getting "access". The rest of the procedure took about an hour and by about 10:30 I was able to see her. She was definitely not herself. Although she had a reason to be fussy, it was very hard seeing her this way . . . knowing there wasn't much I could do to fix it.

She seems back to her normal self now. Very smiley and flirty with everyone that comes in. Everyone that sees her comments on how smiley she is. One nurse said she couldn't remember the last time she saw a baby as smiley as Caroline.

We should get a report from the cardiologist soon about his findings from the cath. He told us this morning right after it that the repair would be in a month or so. It's scary to think it will be so soon but we are happy at the prospects that we could have most of this behind us soon.

Hopefully we will get to go home tomorrow . . .

Saturday, January 15, 2011

A wireless bath

Caroline can tolerate being off her oxygen for a fair amount of time so I decided to give her a wireless bath.

I think she thought I was crazy at first!


Trying to persuade her that it was awesome!

She came around!

Birthday Party Fun

We got invited to the birthday party of some of our favorite people!

With one of the birthday boys and another one of our favorite people



The boys LOVE birthday parties!


And cake!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Our Chirstmas Break

We have had a very good, relaxing, Wii filled break. We decided to get a Wii the first couple days of the break and have had fun getting to know how to work it. The boys love Super Mario Brothers and we have stayed up late many nights trying to beat the Boss!
Early morning round of golf!

Caroline started doing this. Pretty exciting!

Our Christmas Eve present. Every year it seems like it is a surprise.

Oh my goodness! It was PJs!

We discovered how much Caroline likes having the boys sing to her. It is nice when she is fussy to be able to say, "Boys, sing to your sister." She calms immediately :)!

Christmas morning! Santa was good to us this year! The boys got new headphones in their stockings. Jack insisted on wearing them while he opened his presents even though he wasn't listening to anything.

They love their cars!

My parents and brother came on the 27th. It was so nice to have them here and get to hold Caroline and play with the boys.

Christmas with the Elsberrys on the 28th. The cousins were so excited to get yet another Christmas.

Cooper is waiting super patiently for his turn to open his next present.

We went ice skating on the 28th. The boys weren't sure about it at first.

They had these cones that they could push around to stabilize themselves. Jack kept saying, "This sure is slippery!"

Mom and Dad are natural born ice dancers :)!

Great big brothers!

New Years Eve. A friendly game of bowling amongst the cousins.

And a New Years toast between brothers. These are their Great Grandpa Taylor's champagne glasses. Here's to hoping 2011 is better than 2010!

We had a good visit with the Cardiologist on Wednesday. He was very please with how Caroline looked. He said there is no need to do the Catheterization any time soon (we were thinking it would happen in early January). She is doing so well, he doesn't want to see her again until mid February.