Shrieking and appointment updates

Just when Elijah's cough was starting to get a little bit better.. He woke up this morning with some lovely new congestion. We may as well sit back and enjoy the coughing, because it appears that it is never going to leave.

For the past few weeks, Elijah has started making this horribly loud and annoying noise any time he wants attention. It is not a good noise. It's the noise you hear in the grocery story and then think, "What kind of parents does THAT child have?" We have tried a few different approaches to get him to stop doing it and nothing has worked. Yesterday as we were driving in between doctor appointments (more on those below), and as the shrieking was getting totally out of control, I decided that we needed to take extreme measures. Dan and I chatted and decided that we were going to start Screaming Boot Camp. When at home, a scream equals a timeout (which he detests), period. No exceptions. When in public, a scream equals zero attention from Mommy and Daddy (which he detests). In addition to this, we will reward the good behavior and the good sounds, and do all of this CONSISTENTLY. We tried it when we got home, and it helped. A lot! I noticed at least six times last night where he stopped himself before letting out a shriek. I really hope this works. These noises are enough to drive us mad!

Ok, onto the important stuff.. Our first stop yesterday was cardiology. The emotional trauma Elijah endured was worse than I have ever seen. He was a complete mess when the nurse weighed, measured and xrayed him. He did great for the echo, thanks to Veggie Tales and since I was able to have him sit on my lap through the procedure. And he did great with Dr. G, as usual. Toward the end of the appointment, he even crawled over to him, sat at the foot of his chair and just stared longingly up at him.

Elijah's heart function and valve function look perfect. The only concern is that it is very hard to see what is going on with his pulmonary arteries through the echo. This may or may not indicate a problem. There is no way to know right now, but it is a good sign that he isn't showing any symptoms. If blood flow through his arteries is stressed, he will start to get easily fatigued, so this is a symptom to keep our eyes open for. Unless this starts happening soon, we don't have to go back for SIX MONTHS. That is the longest reprieve we've had yet! So, right around October, Elijah will have his sixth heart cath to get a closer look at those arteries and to see how they are functioning. From there we will have a better idea about when surgery #3 will happen. We really couldn't have asked for a better cardiology report yesterday.

Since cardiology took so long, we missed our pulmonology appointment, but we made it to urology. Dr. R was literally in the room for about 60 seconds. "Everything looks great, come back in a year." If everything still looks great at that time we will never need to go back.

We need to reschedule pulmonology and next Wednesday is neurology. Just a couple more and then we will hopefully have a nice break, just in time for summer.

Thank you for checking in on our shrieking munchkin!