About our Daughter

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Originally uploaded by Joe and Sarah.
About our Daughter:

The Story: Late last week we took Hope in for a “Wellness Check”. The Nurse Practioner heard an irregular heartbeat and immediately referred us to a heart specialist at Children’s Hospital.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we took Hope to Children’s Hospital and met with Dr. Caton. His initial examination included and EKG and lots of listening with his stethoscope. He felt that Hopes heart was functioning properly, but that she probably has a mild “innocent” murmur. He wanted to monitor Hopes heart for 24 hours so, she was promptly hooked up to a Holter Heart Monitor which she carried around everywhere.

This morning, we returned the monitor to the doctor. I asked when we would hear about results of the monitoring. The answer was, “We will call you if there is something to report. No news is good news.”

Late this afternoon the phone rang. Hope answered it and informed Sarah that it was her doctor. Apparently there was news.

The News: There is something irregular happening when Hope is resting and/or sleeping.

This coming Monday we will be taking Hope back to Children’s Hospital for more testing. The testing will include an echocardiogram.

There is no diagnosis yet. The testing should produce a diagnosis soon.

The Parents: We are doing “all right”. We trust God. We are certainly different in how we are handling the news and the stress... Sarah says it’s simply the difference between men and women. Certainly we both are appropriately concerned. We’d be lying if we didn’t say there was some worry or anxiety involved on both our parts. Did I say yet that we trust God?

Besides Hopes heart, we are a bit concerned about the cost. We don’t have health insurance.

Prayers are welcomed, expected even.

We’ll keep you up to date as time goes on.

---joe