Annual Cardiology Follow-Up!

On Tuesday, August 18, we made our trek to Durham for Jacob's annual visit to Duke to see Dr. Rhodes. Dr. Rhodes is special to us because he and Dr. Delaney were the two doctors that were there when Jacob was admitted to Duke at 3 hours old and performed his catheterization at 5 hours old. In essence, they saved his life so he could go on to have surgery by Dr. Jaggers 6 days later.

Every single visit outpatient visit to Duke Children's, we've gone to Elmo's for a meal beforehand. I suppose we are a bit superstitious and we've always gotten good news at these appointment, so we continued our tradition of a meal at Elmo's and had a wonderful lunch there.

We actually were running early and got to the appointment about an hour early. Fortunately, we were taken right back for the vitals check by the nurse. Jacob weighed 36 pounds (90%tile) and was 39 inches tall (75%tile). His BP was 117/77 and I think his pulse was 96. So far so good!

Then, we went down the hall for the EKG. We told J they'd put little stickers on him. They had Nick Jr. playing and he did great!

After that, we had to go downstairs to the first floor of the outpatient clinic for the echo. For his first 18 months, Jacob had four outpatient echos (Sept, Nov, Jan & Oct) that were in the hospital area and most were sedated. Last year, he had his first non-sedated echo in the Children's Clinic and did pretty well. They set up a whole new echo area where the radiology also is, and it was nice. So you wait on the first floor for an echo now. We waited for a little while and then went back. Jacob brought his Blue's Clues Movie and he did really well laying still & following directions. I was very proud of him for being such a big boy!

After the echo, we had to wait another 15-20 minutes to make sure they got all the proper views then we went back upstairs and checked in around 1:30 p.m. to let them know we were ready to see Dr. Rhodes. It was very busy so we hadn't really been bugging the staff. For some unknown reason, at 2:30 p.m., the nurse came out and called J's name, but then was surprised we were sitting there. She said she didn't know where we had been... which is odd because we'd been sitting there for an hour!

Oh well! We were finally taken on back to a room, and Dr. James Johnson, a peds cardio fellow came in and talked to us a little bit. Everything was fine with the EKG and echos. Dr. Rhodes came in and talked about what we'd need to look out for if J ever had complications (not being able to keep up with his peers physically; extreme chest pain, etc.) He again mentioned they will want to do a cath before he is 10 years old. He still has no restrictions, which is wonderful.

All in all it was a great visit and we don't go back until Aug 2010! And at that point, he'll only have an EKG and not an echo because Dr. Rhodes said he felt he'd be able to hear any significant changes if there were any.