Brotherly Love: July 2010

Wow, so it's been awhile since we've updated the blog! We've had a busy past few months, so I'll try to get everyone up to speed! Logan is now 13 months old! He's doing quite well, and we're so very proud of our little boy!

Physically, Logan continues to excel at everything he puts his mind to. He is crawling, relentlessly fast, I might add. Logan's style of crawling is quite unique, however. Unlike the traditional crawl, Logan instead crawls like a bear with his feet on the ground and his knees in the air! It's amusing to watch, but that's just Logan's style!

Also, he pulls himself up to standing with ease, even with a flat surface such as a wall. He's walking with assistance, such as his favorite toy, a plastic shopping cart, which he can push across the room. Also, he can "transition" between surfaces, such as standing at the couch and moving over to the ottoman. Needless to say, our physical therapist, Terra, is always ecstatic!

Cognitively, Logan seems to be progressing very well! While Kireta & I are not experts at spotting the cognitive advances, other therapists are, and more than one has told us that they believe Logan will have a mild cognitive disability. This, of course, isn't for certain, but their observations are certainly valued, and we continue to work with and challenge Logan as often as we can.

Logan is able to put blocks into a container consistantly now, and he plays with toys such as trucks (whenever his brother lets him, he hasn't yet learned to "share") knowing that their wheels move and how they operate. Logan knows to bang the drum, or shake the rattle, etc. We're working on signing "more" with Logan, and he's doing the sign with his left hand, but not quite his right. Logan loves to wave at people, especially daddy, to whom he'll do a special wave consisting of a wave with his left hand, and waving his fist in his right hand, at the same time. I think he's trying to tell me either that he's going to give me a knuckle sandwich, or power to the people, we're not quite sure...

As you might or might not be aware, Logan just got through a minor, albeit still scary, surgery. This one was an incisional hernia repair, necessary for a slight tear in his abdominal wall caused from his chest drain tubes following open-heart surgery. Dr Karrer, a fantastic pediatric surgeon, simply made an incision (actually over the same scar from the chest tube), and then proceeded to sew together the abdominal wall with three stiches, and that was that. Since the main concern for this surgery was the anesthesia, we double scheduled the surgery with his lacrimal duct probing (in layman's terms, the unblocking of his tear ducts). Finally Logan should be able to tear like everyone else, and so his eyes will be less red and puffy, and best of all, much less tears running down his face:) This procedure was done fairly "old school," in that it was a small wire that was inserted down the inside corner of his eyes, clearing whatever blockage was there and opening up some soft muscle tissue between his tear ducts and his nasal canal. All of this sounds a bit scary, and it was, but compared with open-heart, this was a walk in the park. Logan was done with both procedures in 1.5 hours, and we were driving home by 10:30 am! I literally waited longer to get my passport renewed!

As for follow-ups with his beloved cardiologist, Dr. Carrie, we have found that while Logan's VSD (the holes in the heart) have closed completely, and his pulmonary stenosis is good at 28%, the leakage between his pulmonary artery and the right ventricle (the bottom left chamber of the heart) has progressed to border-line severe. What this means is that every time his heart (in particular his right ventricle) contracts, it forces blood up through the pulmonary artery. This is good! If you remember, one condition of tetralogy of fallot is pulmonary stenosis, or a constriction of the artery so that not enough blood can get through, thus leading to patients turning blue! What is bad is that as his right ventricle expands, it also pulls blood back towards his right ventricle, which the tricuspod valve is supposed to prevent (think of it as a one-way check valve).
So what does all of this mean? Quite simply, that Logan will need another repair, perhaps sooner than we thought. How soon? We don't know. Dr Carrie has made the point that his leakage is still much better than if they had done the traditional repair (check back 1 year for details regarding his "valve sparring technique"), and so applying that logic, I'd expect his repair to be between 3-5 years of age. This is when most kids who had their pulmonary valve completely removed would have their second open-heart. (Their third would be after adolescence). Since Logan has had his valve remaining intact, we have a very good possibility that his repair can be done via the cath lab, i.e. through his arterial line in his groin. The only problem is that he will need to be 40 lbs. He is presently only 17. Also, in 2-4 years from now, there's a good chance technology will continue to advance, and that weight could very well drop, let's say, to 30 lbs. I feel pretty confident that Logan will be 30 lbs 2-4 years from now, as he eats like a champ:) So for those of you reading this wondering if our little Logan will require another open-heart surgery, I can say probably not, but nothing's for certain. Please continue to keep Logan in your prayers, and in particular, that he will be of a proper weight so that when he does need his correction, that it can be done in the cath lab.

Alright, I've spent plenty of time evaluating Logan. Now let's get to the fun stuff, shall we? Pictures! (Also, Kireta is much better than I at posting new pictures [almost at a weekly basis] on her facebook page. Since I am obviously poor at updating this blog, you might want to check her page more often if that's what you'd like to see:) Without further ado...

We had a large 1st birthday party for our little man! We bbq'd and had everyone outdoors on a beautiful day!

Logan even got his own cake. He dug his hands into it, and realized that while it tastes pretty good, he really wasn't that into the texture:)

Logan loves his Auntie!

Nana & Gabe made the trip out from PA! We had all of the grandparents (minus PopPop Geoff who should be out later) come out for Logan's 1st birthday! Grammie flew in from Pittsburgh, and Poppy from DC!