kadyellebee

After a day like today, some good music is doing my heart good.

So far I’ve heard Sarah’s Fallen, Dido’s Here with me, Various Roswell Soundtrack songs, Natalie’s Torn, Poe’s Hello, several Avril songs, and now Vanessa Carlton’s Pretty Baby.

Leonard’s in pretty good spirits, or at least seemed to be when we were visiting. The diagnosis as of now is actually a Congenital Heart Defect (which may have been different than Disease which I called it earlier). The two sections of his heart have a hole between them that makes oxygenated and unoxygenated blood mix. The specific hole is called an Atrial Septal Defect. In addition, whichever part of the circulation system to do with the blood and heart that changes from in the womb to birth has something not right with it. I can’t seem to find a definition that sounds like what Megan was describing (it may be Patent ductus arteriosus, but I’m not sure).

There are several heart specialist at the hospital he’s at, but not one who has ever done anything to do with the 2nd issue (that I don’t know what’s called! ). Luckily, OHSU (in Portland) has a cardiology doctor who is very smart they are going to send him to. Possibly the doctor who specializes in Adult Congenital Heart Diseases. We’ll see tomorrow if they transfer him over there or just schedule an appointment.

He was having some sort of an ultrasound tonight after we left that has a Q in the abbreviation, but I don’t remember what exactly it was. He’s having a Transesophageal echocardiogram tomorrow morning, which is where a tube goes down your throat and goes very close to the heart to see what is going on. Its a much more clear picture of the heart than a EKG.

So its kinda in the wait-and-see section of things right now. Writing about it and researching everything I can remember hearing them talk about makes me feel like I’m doing *something*. Which is something even though reading about blood flow makes my veins hurt by some silly mental association.

I could just about whack my mom. Leonard asked her about using sick time for this week (he only got about 20 hours in in the first 3 days because he went home early not being able to breathe every day.), and she said "I’ll ask your dad." Why couldn’t she just have eased his worries by saying yes? He’s got sick time available, and legitimate reason for being gone. I realize that money is very tight to be giving extra money out when employees don’t work (I believe most peoples' sick time was cut off), but he’s in the hospital with heart problems, if that isn’t a valid reason, I don’t know what is. :sigh: Maybe I’ll call my dad in the morning and point this out to him.

Now its Evanescence’s Imaginary. If E wasn’t sleeping, I’d turn it up loud to hear the bass line and wipe away my worries. Sometimes it works.