Liam's Heart

This little piece of heaven is mine, mine, mine. My sweet little Liam, adorable in every way (he is also a HUGE terror). He loves Thomas the Train, Dinosaurs, Roaring, Climbing, Jumping, Breaking Things, Kisses, Snuggling, Being Chased, Doing naughty little things, helping mommy with the laundry, playing with his big brothers and sisters, going "wimming", going outside, riding his tricycle, playing with his big brothers action figures, going to nursery, watching Brother Bear at nap time....and a million and one other things I hope to always remember. He is my sweet Heart I tell you. Tomorrow my sweetheart is having a Cardiac Angiogram/CT Scan.

Mr. Liam got really sick back in June with a high fever that just wouldn't go away. He became incredibly lethargic, kind of like a limp noodle, and just was not himself at all. He had a routine appointment that day with an ENT for something completely unrelated and I figured I would just keep the appointment so he coudl still be seen by a doctor. Jeremiah was out of town on business, so I left the 4 older kids with a friend from church and headed out to the appointment. Well, the ENT was absolutely no help at all and basically told me that I should just take him over to my regular doctor. After hearing the symptoms my regular doctor told me I needed to rush right over to the Children's Hospital to have him seen. Well, rush we did and they took us right in.

When we got to the Children's Hospital he was running a fever of nearly 103, barely moving, he was just slumped over and sleeping. The doctor was very worried that he had spinal meningitis and wanted to prepare him for a spinal tap. The nurses began to poke and prod with needles, and numbing cream for where the ivs and spinal tap would be placed. Liam pouted a whole lot but barely let out a cry....he was that sick. The Dr. sent him for a Chest X-ray, drew more blood, and hooked him up to an IV to begin preparing him for the spinal tap. His White Blood Cell count was extremely low for a little boy his age and they were really worried about what could be causing his immune system to crash like this. After two bags of IV fluid Liam started to perk up and the Dr. decided not to do the spinal tap after all. (Great! But not great because we still didn't know what was wrong with him). She wanted to observe him for several more hours just in case. Eventually, she sent us home with no diagnosis and a note to see his pediatrician first thing in the morning.

He suffered with fevers and chills throughout the night and still had a 102 fever when we made it in to the pediatrician the next morning. They felt he had a virus of some sort and that it would take awhile to leave his system. HOWEVER, they did have some interesting information for me. The Chest X-rays that they had obtained the night before showed an unexplained shadowed area over the heart. This could be the way he was placed during the xray, an enlarged thymus gland, or a Double Aortic Arch.

Our pediatrician sent us to meet with a Pediatric Cardiologist the following week who ran several tests, EKG, Echocardiogram...The EKG came out fine, the echocardiogram wasn't very definitive. He had been moving around A LOT while they took it, the didn't get all the views they needed, he was in a lot of pain when they applied pressure under the sternum....so the cardiologist felt like the best thing for us to do was to have a Cardiac Angiogram/Chest CT done to figure out what is causing that shadow. She was hoping to have it done and over within a week but our insurance had other plans. Because he will need to be sedated and a breathing tube will need to be placed we had to wait for an open slot at the Children's Hospital to come available. It was scheduled for tomorrow, Aug 3 at noon. At the time it was 6 weeks away but now here we are the night before and I'm getting all panicky. I know it's a fairly routine procedure but the thought of sedation, and a breathing tube (they will be stopping his breathing several times through out the procedure to be able to get clear pictures of the heart), well it all just freaks me out! You would think that with all that our son Brinton has been through that I would be an old pro by now but I'm not. It still makes my heart ache. It still makes me feel helpless. It still makes me feel like turning around and running in the opposite direction, taking my baby to a cave in the middle of nowhere and hiding.

Could you please pray with us? Could you please remember my little boy in your prayers tonight? We would appreciate it so much.