February 7-14, 2010 is Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness week. Up until 3 years ago, Dan and I (along with most of our friends and family) were aware that heart defects existed but had never had much knowledge about them or even known of anyone who personally was affected by one. It's amazing all we've learned about heart defects in this short amount of time as our family has been personally touched by a CHD.
We have been so blessed to live in such a technologically advanced society where we have instant connections to other families with similar CHD's through such advances as blogs (our heart friends list continues to grow over on our sidebar), websites, Facebook, email and more. Today, in reading one of our friends' carepage, they linked to a great (long) video on youtube from the doctors at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) describing once again the 3-stage surgery Ethan is in the process of completing to help treat his defect - Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). The video is about 9 minutes long, but definitely does a great job with new animations in helping explain HLHS and how the surgeries work together to help give Ethan and other kids like him a chance at a longer, more "normal" life than kids 30 years ago could have ever hoped for.
Next Monday, Feb. 15, we will be returning to see our cardiologist for our bi-annual checkup of Ethan's heart function. Most likely, we will have an echo (sonogram of the heart), pulse ox check, and start discussions about when to start making plans for Ethan's 3rd (and hopefully final) stage of surgery. Scary to think about but oh it will be so nice to also finally get this behind us once and for all. To God be all the glory for all He has and will continue to do in our sweet boy's life!
And what post on CHD Awareness would be complete without some facts about CHD's? This year, I got my information from the CHIN.org website (CHIN - Congenital Heart Information Network). Please help me in spreading the word about heart defects this week and year!
More posts to come about what we've been up to since we got discharged last month!
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