Miracle Child

Alistair had his 6 month cardiology check-up today at Children's Hospital. This visit they only did a chest x-ray. Dr. Lewin had decided last visit that we would just do an x-ray and if anything looked worse he would then do an Echo. Well not only did it not look worse, it looked better!! Alistair's heart has shrunk down some, noticeably so even to the untrained eye. Generally when there is some change, it is usually not detectable to Seth or I as we don't know what to look for. But looking at the x-ray from a year ago and the one from today, there was a definite change in the diameter of the top of the aortic valve as well as the overall size of his heart. I asked Dr. Lewin why he thought that might be (not that we were complaining!) and he speculated that it could be because the tricuspid valve has grown some and the flaps are big enough that they are closing a little better so that not so much blood is backing up into the atrium and therefore the overall size of his heart is shrinking some. He was careful to point out that it was speculation and that we won't know for sure until we did an echo. But any reason coupled with the fact that Alistair is doing so well growing and being active is not a reason to do an echo right now. So we will have to wait until October to get a true reason for the shrinkage. I then asked if that could mean he wouldn't have to have surgery some day because his heart seems to be fixing itself. He said that he would probably still have to have the valve replaced sometime in his lifetime and if it could be when he is a young adult or an adult, that would be ideal. So good news for sure. Dr. Lewin also let it slip a little that there was some discussion and disagreement among the different teams in the NICU over whether Alistair was to have surgery when he was inpatient and Dr. Lewin basically put his foot down and made it clear they were to take the wait and see approach (the worst weekend of our lives when he was inpatient). Today he said, based on what he saw on the xrays, he was really glad nothing was done when Alistair was younger!