Monday, July 1, 2013

Sweet Heart

Dear Conrad,

We got a call from the hospital that we had been discharged before your hearing tests had been completed. Because you were born via cesarean, you had a lot of fluid in your ears, so you failed your first test. You were supposed to be given two more, but for whatever reason, you didn't get them. Fortunately, the hospital offered to schedule and pay for a hearing test at their facility, so it all worked out. They even sent us some apology gift cards to Applebee's, which was so kind of them.

At your next pediatrician's appointment, you were hardly jaundiced at all, so we were relieved that you were bouncing back so well. Dr. Weidt thought she heard your heart murmur too, so I told her about the nurse that had been sent out by our insurance and how she thought she heard one too. She immediately scheduled a visit with a heart specialist, and even got it to coincide with our hearing test.

The day of the tests came, and your daddy and I were both really nervous that we would get bad news. It took us forever to find the hearing specialist's office, but we ran into a doctor who showed us where to go. She walked us through some of the procedure, like how they can tell if a baby's hearing is working since babies can't verbally tell you that they can hear things. It was really fascinating. The first time she ran the test, you failed again, and your dad and I stiffened. Since we are both musicians, we were afraid that there was going to be a huge part of our lives that we couldn't share with you. The doctor then switched out the tips on her little machine, saying that they might have been too big and were giving her a false reading. After that, you passed with flying colors. Thank goodness.

We made our way down to wear another doctor was going to ultrasound your heart. My best friend Jeff sent me a reassuring message that he had a heart murmur as a baby and grew out of it, so we hoped that if you did have a murmur that it would be something minor. We watched as the doctor scanned all over your heart, and you flailed your little arms. You weren't uncomfortable or anything, you just couldn't control your limbs yet. In fact, you hardly made any noise at all during the ultrasound. The doctor who was scanning you said that he couldn't see any problems with the heart, but after a hospital in Saint Louis checked it all out we would have a definitive answer.

I just realized that, as of this writing, Saint Louis never did call to tell me whether you had a hole in your heart or not. Ha! I can only assume it was a fluke since Dr. Weidt has checked your heart at every appointment and it has been fine since that first one.

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