Elijah the heart hero never letting anything stop him. Today is your 4th heart day. It's 4 years since we took you down to Great Ormond Street for open heart surgery. It seems to have crept up on us again. Another whole year has passed but it hasn't changed how I feel about that day. Some have said that oh, by now surely you should have gotten over it after all it's been 4 years. The answer is I don't think I ever will. I have been thinking a lot about that day, where I signed the consent forms for them to take you and operate on you. To either save or take your life. That day was the worst of my life, the unknown certainty of whether you would come back up again. I held you as they put you to sleep. They gave me your dummy as they took you from me and laid you on the operating table as if you weighed nothing. I couldn't even kiss you goodbye in case it was the last time. That's why I won't ever get over it and those who have been in the...
Having his heart scanned at NNUH Today is day 5 of the #chdphotochallenge and today's blog is all about something we are now very experienced on. At each appointment Elijah will have a heart scan/ echo which is basically an ultrasound to determine if his murmour is the same, is valve regurgitation has worsened and how his heart is functioning and coping. We have had many ECG's and echoes and Elijah also had a X Rays whilst we were waiting to go down to GOSH (which was odd as we saw both sets of his teeth!). A couple of years ago Elijah wouldn't even let the consultant scan him, now after much talking and practising with family and even at nursery he doesn't mind having it done and we look at the different colours and his heart on the screen. Even now I have no idea what I'm looking at when I see it up on the screen. It is something that we know quite well in the family too with Greg having to go for an ECG soon due to his family history. At his last appo...