Martin Update - Gold Stars All-Around

Martin had his first post surgery (and post birth) visit with Dr. Johnson, our pediatric cardiologist, here in Athens this week. He ran through the familiar gamut of vital signs collection with relative ease until we got to the dreaded thermometer segment. Having that cold thing in his armpit always makes Martin wail a bit. He quickly made up for it though with an uncannily good-tempered ride through the echo-cardiography chamber of horrors.

We'd undressed him down to his diaper to get his weight, so at this point he was laying on the exam bed wrapped up in just a blanket while the echo-tech waved the little goop-covered wand back and forth across his chest for the better part of half an hour. He looked like he might be cold at one point, so I folded some of the excess blanket over the exposed top part of his head to keep him a little warmer. When I looked over again he had managed to grab and pull it all the way down over his head effectively shielding himself from the cold and the fluorescent lights overhead. I was about to move it, thinking it might impede his breathing, but I could see him breathing fine and continuing to work his pacifier with the same Maggie Simpson-like vigor as before, so decided to let him lie peacefully in the bed he'd made while the echo-tech finished taking pictures of his heart.

For enhanced aural enjoyment, leave this clip playing as you read the rest..

So.. after Martin had every part of him inspected, detected, reflected and no part was left untouched (there was a diaper change somewhere in the mix) we were told to go and sit down in that room that says "Room 2".

We walked over to the, to the room there, right about the time Martin remembered he was hungry and started to make all kinds of mean nasty ugly-looking hungry faces at us in the room there. But like the great mom she is, Morgan had even equally remembered to pack his bottled lunch and so we all had a great time in the room, talkin about Martin, watching him drink, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about in the room. And everything was fine, he was filling diapers and drinking milk and all kinds of things, until the doctor came over...

had some paper in his hand...

held it up and said:

"Before you ask anything, Martin's doing great! Dr. Kirshbom [our surgeon] gets a gold star! If you took 100 babies with this condition, at this stage, he'd be in the 90th percentile at least."

:D

And friends, we couldn't have been more excited. I mean.. I mean.. I Mean, we sang in 5 part harmony and took 27 8x10, color, glossy pictures and put circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one commemorating how ecstatic we were! Martin got so excited he started a movement right there on the room 2 bed and it was about that time we decided it would be good idea to just to sing a few bars of Alice's Restuarant and walk out...

All right now :)

If you've never heard Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant Massacre,
block off half an hour sometime and enjoy :)