Cole vs. The EKG

We went yesterday to meet Dr. Joseph Paolillo. He is the new cardiologist who will be doing the heart catherization before the surgery. He was very nice and easy to talk to.

Before Dr. Paolillo came in Cole had the usual "oxygen monitor" strapped to his toe/foot so we could see where his oxygen levels were. They were at about 84/86 which is pretty normal for Cole at this stage.

Then they put the EKG stickers on and clipped all the wires to him. Surprisingly he did not start screaming and flinging himself around like a chimpanzee. We were holding our breath because one never knows when the chimp will come out! He stared at the whole thing and was a little intrigued. Intrigue is good.

I attempted to stealthly remove one of the stickers and that resulted in the appearance of the chimp. Not a full blown appearance of the chimp but enough to leave you with an unpleasant experience to not repeat the same action twice.

Cole then started to pull them off himself. No "ouchie", no pain, just pulling them off to the point that it looked painful, but whatever works.

Dr. Paolillo came in and introduced himself and went over the details of what he would be doing for the heart catheterization to get everything checked out for Dr. Watts to do the surgery.

One thing different about this one is they will do one in his neck and one in his leg instead of just going up through the leg to look at his heart.

There are unpleasant things they have to share even though they are rare just in case they happen, which is comforting instead of surprises after you get your baby in there and they say to just go wait in the waiting room, this is routine and 20 minutes later they are running in and telling you to come with them as quickly as possible and you get back to where your baby is and they say we need you to sign this right now so we can do this extra procedure while we are in there because we found some collaterals (extra blood vessels) that need to be closed down with coils and there are a lot. What are you going to say? Let us think about it? Can you give us a minute? You just sign and trust.

It was nice to have the could be's disclosed up front this time. He said it was rare but one thing with Cole's specific heart defects are his bottom half sometimes won't communicate with the top half after a heart catheter and a heart block will happen, which the heart stops. So they will have a temporary pace maker put in to get things going again if that is the case. Again he said it's rare but it does happen. You try as a parent to sit there and nod like it's all scientific information and you have no emotional connection to the person they are saying this could happen to.

Our biggest hurtle and prayers needed right now are Cole staying healthy and strong to have this procedure done so we can move on to surgery.

Thank you to everyone who holds Cole in their prayers like he is their own baby/grandbaby going through this!