The end of the week went slow. We ended up taking Caden into the pediatrician on Friday morning due to excessive congestion. Sherry feared that Caden might have aspirated on some of his oral food, but that was not the case. Caden just has a little cold or he is having some kind of allergic reaction to something in the house that has his nose running. This caused an excessive amount of suctioning until Friday night when we got him started on Zyrtec and some cough medicine. Oh, and he cut two more teeth over the past few days and we are sure that helped add to the secretions.
Now things have settled down. Caden went several hours Saturday night without needing suctioning. This is a BIG deal. This type of swallowing functionality by Caden is allowing for Sherry and me to get ever so closer to a “normal” household life. The swallowing is coming, it just is not coming the way and as fast as we thought it would after the botox.
Heart
Sherry and I have become rather disturbed with Caden’s heart diagnosis recently. We have known for a while that Caden had things that might need attention in the future. Well, it appear from conversations with Caden’s pediatrician that the ASD (hole between the atriums) can be a little more serious than we thought if not treated in a timely manner. Even the cardiologist has mentioned how this repair depends greatly on timing. The timing involves life threatening alternatives if the ASD is not repaired within the right timing. The ASD could normally be fixed via a catheter, but Caden also has a bicuspid aortic valve. We are being told that this valve will need to be replaced at some point in the future, but no specific timing has been given. The disturbing this is that this valve can not be replaced without an open-heart surgery. Furthermore, once it is replaced with a mechanical or donor valve it will need to be upgraded/replaced again as Caden grows. We plan to sit down with the cardiologist in the next week to get a little clearer picture of what needs to be done with Caden’s heart. Right now Caden is not scheduled for another cardiologist visit until February. After our conversation with the pediatrician we want to know why they are not watching Caden a little closer.
We are not sure why we are just now getting enlightened to these heart issues. Maybe we got too caught up in other things and just misunderstood, but I don’t think so. We have learned that Caden’s initial surgery was a much higher risk than we were made to believe. Maybe they held back on giving us the details of potential future heart repair because they did not expect such an awesome outcome from the first heart surgery. The cardiologist was picking his chin up off the floor when he saw Caden sitting up by himself on the examination table at a whopping 17 pounds and 29 inches long.
Please keep Sherry and me in your prayers as we enquire about Caden’s heart condition. We need to make sure we are asking the right questions because it appears that information may not always get volunteered in a timely manner. We love the MUSC cardiology department, but we constantly have to work to get answers as with many other areas of Caden’s care.
Other Stuff
I want to give a big thanks to the fans of the Oak Ridge Boys for following Caden’s progress.
Keep an eye out for more informaiton in the 2005 Lowcountry Heart Walk coming up next month. You can join Caden’s Team to raise money for this event by clicking the link at the top of this page. I will post more inforamtion on this in the next week.
Thanks a bunch.