Teddy Update from his May 23rd Echo
I let some people know already by call and if you follow me on Twitter you already have read this, but some people don't. Teddy had his first echo with his new cardiologist, Dr. Stiver, since Dr. Wheller who's been his cardiologist since before he was born has retired. The echo looked good, for the most part. There's a few things that they look for. They look to make sure that there's sufficient blood flow from the conduit to his lungs, but that's generally not likely to be a problem.
The bigger thing they look for is to check the artificial aortic valve. They want to make sure that there's not much blood flow back into the heart the wrong way (regurgitation), but they also want to check to see how the valve is being tolerated. As time goes on, the valve can thicken and calcify since it's made of basically pig collagen. It's graded (like a lot of stuff in medicine) mild, moderate and severe. Teddy's valve has between mild and moderate thickening. That's generally OK, but it's worse than it was 9 months ago (which, given that time has passed, you'd expect it to be). For now, it's not something we need to worry about, but it does mean that the next surgery is a little closer on the horizon than it was before.
In the meantime, Ted's fine. He's a normal little 4 year old... Well.. Not entirely normal. His physical development is slightly slower, but he seems determined to make up for that with mental development. He's doing addition and subtraction and starting multiplication. He reads. He counts in 6 languages and is learning other words too.
More importantly, he seems to be developing into a caring and empathetic little guy. He just got done with non-competitive soccer, and in his last practice, one of the other boys fell down. Teddy went up to him, helped him up, made sure he was OK and asked if we wanted to keep playing. All season, Ted had trouble paying attention because he just liked to run and look at the sky and talk to the other kids. But that moment made the whole season worthwhile.
The bigger thing they look for is to check the artificial aortic valve. They want to make sure that there's not much blood flow back into the heart the wrong way (regurgitation), but they also want to check to see how the valve is being tolerated. As time goes on, the valve can thicken and calcify since it's made of basically pig collagen. It's graded (like a lot of stuff in medicine) mild, moderate and severe. Teddy's valve has between mild and moderate thickening. That's generally OK, but it's worse than it was 9 months ago (which, given that time has passed, you'd expect it to be). For now, it's not something we need to worry about, but it does mean that the next surgery is a little closer on the horizon than it was before.
In the meantime, Ted's fine. He's a normal little 4 year old... Well.. Not entirely normal. His physical development is slightly slower, but he seems determined to make up for that with mental development. He's doing addition and subtraction and starting multiplication. He reads. He counts in 6 languages and is learning other words too.
More importantly, he seems to be developing into a caring and empathetic little guy. He just got done with non-competitive soccer, and in his last practice, one of the other boys fell down. Teddy went up to him, helped him up, made sure he was OK and asked if we wanted to keep playing. All season, Ted had trouble paying attention because he just liked to run and look at the sky and talk to the other kids. But that moment made the whole season worthwhile.
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| "Mommy, I don't want to wear my medal!" |
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