My heart

In July, I went to a yearly doctor appointment and was talking to my doctor about my frequent headaches. I mentioned to her that my dad had a hole in his heart and she recommended that I get tested for it. She said that it isn't proven to be genetic, but it definitely can run in families. So she referred me to Sorensen Cardiovascular.

A few days later I went into their office and had a transcranial doplor (TCD) done. This device according wikipedia measure the blood flow through the brain's blood vessels. They put this headphone type thing on your head. Then they also put an IV in you and then inject a saline solution into your bloodstream. They pump it through with some air. They do this several times--one while just resting, one when pushing, one when breathing, etc. The point of the test is to see if this saline solution is reaching your brain. Theoretically, you should see none of this saline solution in your brain because it would flow throughout your body. However, if you have a hole in your heart then some of the saline solutions flows from your left to right atrium and then up to your brain.

The test only took a few minutes and then they took me into a waiting room for the results. I was pretty nervous going in for this testing just because I didn't know what to expect. I almost felt silly for going in just because my headaches aren't that bad compared to other symptoms they ask you after.

After waiting for awhile, the nurse finally came in and told me that I had exactly what my dad had. They told me I had a PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale). This is the flap between your left and right atrium. Everyone has a 'hole' when they are little but it is supposed to close over by the time you are two. In some cases, it never does and it can cause problems. Mostly neurological problems--light headiness, dizziness, etc. The biggest fear of this is that you may have blood clots that flow across this hole and up to your brain which can cause strokes, etc.

At this appointment they didn't tell me how severe they thought my hole was. The nurse did reference several times that it appeared there was a lot of blood flow going through the brain but then wanted you to come back and do an echo cardiogram to determine more of the size and what they would recommend.

First, however, they sent me to get an MRI just to see if I had any damage to my brain basically. Luckily, when I went in for this test everything about my brain looked good. They said it didn't appear I had any strokes or damage to my brain. That is good news!

I then went back to Sorensen Cardiovascular to have an echo cardiogram (ultrasound) of my heart done. This was pretty interesting to see your heart. They once again inject the saline solution into me and wanted to see if it flowed from the right side of my heart to the left. When they injected the solution we watched as bubbles flowed very quickly from the right side to the left confirming what they had suspected. When they were done with the echo I waited to see Dr. Sorensen himself. He came in to tell me that on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) my hole would be considered a 5. He said that I had blood flow moving across my heart at all times (resting, exercising, whatever). He said that he would recommend closing this hole. They still didn't know the exact size of the hole but based on these tests could tell that I was having a lot of left to right blood flow which isn't normal.

Ben and I didn't have to think about it long before we decided we should do this. We felt like it would be a good preventative thing to do and were also hoping it might make me feel better in regards to my headaches. We scheduled my procedure for a few weeks before our Hawaii trip at the end of September.

I was pretty nervous simply because I have never had a surgery done or been in a hospital except for when I had Logan. I wasn't allowed to eat anything for 7 hours before my surgery. They had me to come in to the hospital at 1 pm. I was lucky enough to have my mom and Ben there with me to support me and calm my nerves. My wonderful sister and dad were watching Logan for me. They didn't take me into the surgery room until about 3 pm. They didn't put me out completely but did give me some 'forgetting' medicine they called it. However, I would have to say it didn't make me forget a lot. I was very coherent during the surgery and watched them on the x-ray screen. They didn't do an open heart surgery, they simply used a scope and went up through a vein in my leg to put this device into the hole--an Amplazter Occluder. I remember a very butterfly feeling in my chest when they opened the device up. The b picture below is what I could see on the x-ray machine. I could then see the scope as they went around the device to make sure it was in properly. The surgery took about an hour and half. They told me when they were done that I had a 13 mm hole. That is the size of the inner part of the device. The device itself is over an inch. Dr. Sorensen also has a hole in his heart. He told me his was a 10mm hole. Normally they close around 7-9mm holes. He told me that for a female my hole was very large.

They also confirmed after this surgery that I didn't have a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) but an Atrial Septal Defect (ASD). The main difference is that a PFO means you have a flap of some sort that is allowing blood flow across from left to right. With an ASD you have NO flap at all so not only can you have left to right blood flow but right to left. They had suspected this is what I had from the large amount of blood flow they had seen on the tests but they cannot tell for sure until they go in. All of the concerns are the same as the PFO for the ASD but they also worry that you might have heart failure problems because your right side of your heart is having to work a lot harder than it should.

When I came out of surgery I had a horrible headache but otherwise felt just fine. I had to lay still for 3 hours and not move my legs which got very uncomfortable towards the end. My dad brought Logan up to the hospital to see me and he rode on my bed as they moved me to my room. I wish I had a picture of this as it was definitely a highlight of my stay there. I had to stay the night and Ben was nice enough to stay with me. My mom and dad took Logan for the night and this was officially his first night away from us. Here I am in the morning with my cardio breakfast which actually wasn't too bad.

They had to do an echo one more time to make sure the device was in the correct place and that they heart wasn't rejecting it. I checked out in the clear and was sent home at 9:30 in the morning.

I was told to keep it easy for a few days and then I could resume normal activity. The only restrictions I had were I could not lift, pull or push more than 50 and I couldn't engage in strenuous exercise. Not really that restricting for me. :)

I felt really good the first couple of days and then after 3 days I felt like I started to get worse. My leg started to get really sore from where they had gone in with the scope. Come to find out I was bleeding internally and had developed a hematoma which was very painful. When I left the hospital they didn't prescribe me with any pain medication. I had to call my doctor and ask them to get me something because I was so uncomfortable. The bleeding stopped on its own so I just had to wait a few more days till I started to feel normal again. A little after a week I felt back to normal.

I have to take Plavix for 3 months and Asprin for 6 months but otherwise am back to good. I am happy to report that my headaches seem to less often and more responsive to medicine which is wonderful. It will take 6 months before my heart tissues fully grows over the device so it could take some time to see what the effect is. Nevertheless, I am grateful that we were able to find this and have it fixed before it caused more problems when I got older.

Summer (and some Fall) of Fun Recap: Part 2

Living Planet Aquarium
Due to Logan's accident from camping we ended up staying home over the 24th of July (we were going to go camping again with Ben's parents but decided that wouldn't be very smart with a boy with new stitches). So instead we decided to do some partying here.
On Saturday, we took Logan to the Living Planet Aquarium down in Sandy. Although the aquarium isn't huge (what to you expect in Utah), Logan had lots of fun. His favorite fish was the 'nemo' fish of course. He also enjoyed watching the big shark swim around. He also wanted to get in and swim with the sting rays. I seriously think he would have dived in if I would have let him. It was fun to watch how excited he was about the fish!
Cherry Hill
Logan and I also ventured to Cherry Hill since I had never been. I think his favorite thing was the Lazy River and unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of him in there. Nevertheless, he loved floating in the tube around and around.

He loved played with his cousin Abby at Pirates Cove. It took him a while to warm up to all the water but eventually started to like it. After we had played for quite some time he enjoyed eating his favorite snack, Craisens, on his towel. I had so much fun just enjoying a fun day with him and wish we would have done this sooner in the summer. I can't wait to have more of these in the future.
New Job
Ben recently found a job with Overstock.com as a Web Designer. He is loving it so far and so I am. I am now working just three days a week which makes my balance of family and work seem a little more even. We are very grateful he was able to find a job in this stuff economy!

Discovering Popsicles
Football

One evening we were hanging out at Grandma Greats and all of the boys were playing football. Logan wanted to be a part of it and lined up with them and would run back and forth. All of his cousins are so cute to play with him.

When he got bored with playing football he wanted to climb a tree because he had seen his cousin David do so. Ben helped him get up there and he was quite proud of himself. Sheep Dog Trials

Over Labor day weekend we headed up to the Soldier Hollow sheep dog trials for the third year in a row. Unfortunately, Ben wasn't feeling very well this day so Logan and I ventured up to the event by ourselves and met up with my family. Every year we get there earlier and still don't feel like we have enough time. We went on the finals day of the trial and the course seemed a lot more challenging than in the past. Several dogs just disappeared up the hill and their owners had to go get them.
Logan loved to watch the dogs run up the hill, but when they got too far away he lost interest. He mostly enjoyed just walking around the venue. We tried to get him to take a nap a few times during the day but it never worked. He would sit in his chair like this.......but never give in. Finally at like 4 in the afternoon after watching some of the Splash Dogs he crashed on his Uncle Jeff. We then just layed him down on a blanket while we watched some more herding. I love going to this event and it made me want to go do some agility with cayman. I hope that we can keep going to this event every year!

The Accident

When my dad took his hand away this is what we saw....

These pictures still make me sad. My wonderful sister's first thought was to give him some motrin to help him deal with the pain. We then took a look at the wounds and debated what we should do. We didn't have any cell phone reception up at our campground and it was about a 40 minute drive down the canyon to get reception. We decided that the wounds looked pretty deep and probably dirty so we decided we should take him down the canyon to the insta care. We tried to put some ice on his head as he fell asleep driving down the caynon. When we arrived at the insta care Logan said 'doctor.' They took us back to the room where they decided pretty quickly that they needed to stitch him up. They brought in a portable DVD player and let him watch "Nemo" while they put some numming stuff on his head. I sat with him in the patient chair and we cuddled. He was quite excited about watching Nemo and I was thinking in my head that it was a good thing that he liked some movies cause it definitely helped in this case.

After about 30 minutes of trying this topical numming they brought in the doctor and decided it was time to do the stitches. They had to strap Logan down to the table so that he wouldn't mess up the stitches. After a few seconds, however, one of Logan's arms broke loose. The doctor was pretty shocked and said that doesn't happen very often. Logan was not very happy about being restricted obviously. I think it was good his arm broke loose cause I was able to hold on to it while they stitched up his wounds. His wounds were pretty dirty and they had to do quite a bit of cleaning to make sure they wouldn't get infected. This is a picture of him when we finally got home that day. My sister and her husband and my dad packed up the whole camp and then brought us all our stuff--they are such troopers.

He ended up getting 5 stitches total--four above his left eye and one in his hairline. We were told to keep them in for just 5 days and to then go get them out. They put him on Omnicef to make sure it wouldn't get infected.

It was amazing to watch how much his injury changed over these 5 days.

Day Two

Day Three-morning

Day Three--eveningDay Four
Day Five--stitches out!

Logan did so well getting his stitches out. He sat in his dad's arms the whole time while the doctor took them out one by one and put them on a popsicle stick for us to keep.

Amazing that in just five days your kid can look almost as good as new. He has a little scar still above his eye but we are hoping with time (and some Mederma) that it will continue to fade. Although this was still scary for us, we were very grateful that it wasn't any worse.

Campking

This year my family went up to Tony Grove again to do some campking as Logan calls it. We decided to stay three nights instead of just two. Like every good parent, I was worried about how my child would do but as always he suprised me. Our first day was spent pretty much setting up camp. I am always amazed at how much stuff we take up there. We did manage, however, to get all of us and our stuff in our car.


The next day Logan woke up at the bright hour of 6 am. He kept calling for everyone and we kept trying to keep him quiet. We tried using this......
....the binkie to keep him quiet but that didn't work. We also tried to entertain him with bubbles but that led to more excitement like this....
We eventually were able to get Logan's milk warmed up (yes he still likes it warm--silly kid) and he calmed down for a few mintues before everyone else woke up because of the noise.
We bought Logan his own camping chair this year. We had a hard time finding one and finally found this one. Yes it appears to be pink and purple but we like to call it red! Logan didn't mind and I don't think he sat in it a lot either. This is one of the moments we caught him sitting still.

I always laugh when we go camping cause there is 6 adults and 5 dogs. I think people think we are crazy but all our dogs are great campers. Cayman liked sitting with Jake and Dory under the tree.

And Logan liked sitting with these boys. He was their shadow the whole trip. He loved to go where they were going and do what they were doing.

One of my favorite things to do camping when I was little was painting rocks. So we brought up the water paints and had a rock painting party with Logan.

I think he was more interested in painting himself rather than the rocks. He liked to draw on his legs with the paint.
He also liked playing in the dirt. This is what happens when you let Grandma watch your child..... ...they get just filthy dirty. Good thing I wasn't too worried about this. All part of the camping experience I say. Later that day we got our sunscreen on and went down to the lake to play.

Logan observed the dogs for a bit from the shore....... ......and then decided to get right in! He walked in and just sat down. He then wanted everyone else to sit down in the water too. We were suprised he loved the water so much. We had to take him back and wash him off in the spicket. We then headed back to camp. Cayman was exhausted and curled up in my chair. He loves to play in the water and fetch sticks. He would do it all day if you let him. We tried a few new recipes this year at camp including some Orange BBQ Ribs, Chocolate Oranges, and Swiss Chicken in tin foil. Its amazing how much food we eat while camping. I think one of Logan's favorites were the campfire donuts. Here are some pictures of us just relaxaing around camp. Logan slept much better the next night! He woke up once in the night and was cold so Ben and I put him between us in the sleeping bags and he didn't move the rest of the night. That was probably a sight to see--me, ben, logan and cayman all on our air mattress. He also took great naps at camp in the tent. He would just walk over to the tent and say 'nap.' What a good kid. His favorite thing to do at camp was walk though. He would walk all around the campground loop by himself. As we would get close to our camp he would just start saying 'no, no, no' cause he wanted to keep walking. Since I have such a wonderful family, we all took turns walking around the campground with him. He also loved to say 'water' meaning the lake. He would stop and say 'water' at every little trail that broke off cause it reminded him of the trail we would take down to the lake.

Lucky for him, we took him down to the lake the next day as well fully expecting that he would jump right in. However, he wasn't quite as obsessed with sitting in the water today. He was more into playing with the rocks, etc. in the water.

Cayman was glad we went down to the lake again too! He looks like a drowned rat in the water.

We had such a wonderful time camping and were so impressed with how well Logan was handling it.

Unfortunately, the last morning we were there Logan went off to play with his Papa while we all finished breakfast and lost his balance and fell by my dad's truck. He hit his head on the cardoor and then slip down onto the pavement and rocks. We heard Logan start to cry and saw my dad carrying him over to us. Logan didn't seem to distressed but I could tell from my dad's face that something was wrong. He was holding his head and when he got closer he took his hand away and we all saw the marks on Logan's face. This was definitely not the way we wanted to end our trip.