A Healthy Heart. A Happy Time.

Exactly a month ago I picked up Jake from school and headed up to Primary Children's Outpatient Center for a routine checkup with Jake's Cardiologist Dr. Cowley.  Jake reported with a smile that his friend asked where he was going and Jake said, "To the hospital".  His friend said, "Is everything ok?" and Jake said, "I hope so." Jake had a couple of heart defects when he was born that, without the help of terrific heart surgeons, would have made his life awfully short.

We drove an hour for an appointment that took half hour.  They did an quick EKG, took the blood pressure in both arms and legs and then the Dr. came in.  He looked at Jake and said, "Wow!  You've gotten so big that I feel really old!"  I bet Jake liked being called big!  He's 14, and not super tall, so he doesn't get that a lot.  Dr. Cowley said it seemed like just yesterday when he was talking to Derek and I before and after Jake's surgery.  We remember too, but I am impressed that he remembers.  Jake isn't his only patient!

Just like Jake's last appointment Dr. Cowley mentioned how pleased Dr. Hawkins, the heart surgeon would have been to know how well Jake has done.  Dr. Hawkins passed away due to pancreatic cancer in 2011.  Aside from Jake's scars, Dr. Cowley said that nobody, even a trained cardiologist, would be able to tell anything had ever been wrong with Jake's heart.  Jake keeps growing though, and we keep going up every once in a while to make sure the repair of his heart grows with him.  He won't go again until he's a senior in high school and then he'll have echocardiogram to make sure all is still well.  He's had one before. I think they are fascinating to watch -- they are about a half hour long ultrasound of the heart.

Anyhow, I learned from my friend Susan C. to try to do something fun while we are skipping school for these appointments, and so Jake and I went to the dinosaur museum on our way home.  Jake knows a lot about dinosaurs and could often tell me what I was looking at before either one of us read the information.  He was good company.  Here are some pictures of that:

Selfies don't always work out -- so then you hand your camera over to someone nice.

This was toward the end of our time I think.  I kind of forgot I could get pictures before that.

So Jake is closing his eyes, but for some reason it struck me as funny to have skeleton people
fighting a skeleton dinosaur with spears.  

 We had a happy time, and were happy to hear that Jake has a healthy heart.