This and that

The weekend was a lot of fun visiting with our friends :) We went to Sea World on Saturday and spent Friday and Sunday just hanging out. They all headed home on Sunday evening. On Monday we worked on the house here and there. Mike mowed the lawn and I attacked the playroom. Kristopher can now have his toys back out instead of in his closet and the little guys toys were switched out with some I had put away for a while.

Emma had therapy (yep, on a holiday) and then Mike and I took up his parents' offer to watch the kids and we went out for a nice evening in Orlando- just the two of us :) It had been a while and was nice to have that time alone. Important, too! Not only that, on our way he found a Visa gift card in his wallet he thought had about $7 on it and when I called in to find the balance it had over $90! So instead of a quick inexpensive dinner that we'd planned on doing, we went to the Cheesecake Factory and enjoyed a nice sit-down dinner together and even brought dessert home for later. It was great to have that time alone.

Tuesday I had a dr's appointment in Orlando to check on the baby's heart. I left home with an hour and 15 minutes to spare and a 45-55 minute drive ahead. I get there with 15 minutes to spare after grabbing some lunch at McD's and pull into the parking lot. Then I realize it's 8 spots, nowhere to turn around, and an ambulance also parked in the only space that is probably usually used to turn around and they're trying to get a young child out of it and into the Cancer Center connected to the cardiac building. This was just the beginning of an awful experience LOL!

I did get out thanking God I'd borrowed mom's van and not brought the big van (Mike forgot to leave me his van and took it to work). I made a 3 point turn in the 1 1/2 lane lot and back out 3 blocks to the parking garage. The only perk to the day was I didn't have to pay the $4 parking at the garage because I had a pass for the cardiac center :)

Then I had no time to eat my lunch and instead walked the 3 blocks to the office, signed in, and waited about 10 minutes. I'd arrived at 1:40 and was in the room at 1:50 for a 2pm appointment. They set me up with a towel to keep the goo for the ultrasound off my pants, laying on the bed with the machine and said the dr would be right in. 10, 20, 40, 50 minutes, and then an HOUR went by. I'd gotten up, buttoned my jeans, gotten my book and gotten comfortable. WHAT IN THE WORLD?

Finally a nurse came in and said "oh, the page didn't work, I'll call his cell phone, so sorry". Um... yeah, that'd be good. 10 minutes later he came in and let's just say it wasn't a great experience. He was knowledgeable and his bedside manner was ok, but he came across as having a need to defend himself and his practice since I see another cardiologist with our other 2 kids.

The highlights of the visit would be when he told me that last week he diagnosed a child w/ an AV Canal and suggested his parents get an amnio as there's a 90% chance the child has Ds... so they did and they terminated. WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS TO A PATIENT? AND ESPECIALLY ONE THAT YOU KNOW HAS MULTIPLE CHILDREN WITH DS?? Another great point for him was when he started telling me that the perinatologist must not have known what she was doing and seen "this little hole here" (as he shows me on the echo) and I replied with "that's the PFO, that's fine" and he looked at me, shocked that I not only knew what he was showing me on the echo, but knew the term and that it was a good thing... and he thinks that the perinatologist saw that and thought that the child's heart was messed up because of that. Forget that I told him that due to positioning she couldn't see the upper part of the heart. The perinatologist must be incompotent. Of course...

Then there was his highest moment, possibly, when he asked where my daughter's heart was repaired (after being SHOCKED it wasn't by his practice) and went on to tell me how inferior that hospital and team of surgeons is to his team here and statistics and everything else about how much better they are than the people we see.

Hmm... makes me think that someone feels he has something to proove... that he actually is having a difficult time feeling inferior because we see a different set of doctors and went to a different hospital... He knew his stuff. He, I'm sure, is a great doctor. But there's a certain amount of tact that was definitely missing from our little adventure together and I'm glad to say there is no follow up appointment needed!! Baby's heart is perfect! Except, of course, for that PFO LOL (all babies have a PFO in utero to bypass some of the heart and it should close after birth... but 25% of the population has a PFO as an adult and the only complication is that it CAN be the cause of a stroke later on...). So he says at the end "diagnosis... what am I going to write for diagnosis?? Ah, PFO" and with that I said "I'd hope so, if there wasn't a PFO I have a feeling we'd be in more trouble." "True." And that was that. All done with that visit!! (Thank God!)

FIVE hours later I arrived back at the house.

Today was relaxing, if you can call 4 kids, 2 school runs, and a lot of work with Reece's Rainbow, 2 calls from hospitals for billing and thinking one was a scam because they were both the same hospital and couldn't figure out why there are 2 separate bills... and being woken up by the bug man during the 5 minutes I actually got K to settle down and be quiet. Ok, maybe it wasn't so relaxing... But I was at home a lot of the day so that is nice.

Tomorrow I go back to the perinatologist and MAYBE just MAYBE they'll be doing another echo and we might get to peek and find out whether this little one will be sporting more pink or blue in the fall! Waiting for the Speech therapist for Emma and Micah to get here... One of these days soon I'll get another adoption update up, so much going on I desperately need to update on families!!