Noah's annual cardiologist appointment

It has actually been almost two weeks since he saw the cardiologist. Sometime there are things you hear that take you a while to grasp, and memories of what 9 years of having a child with a heart problem have been like. There is no other way to describe it but a roller coaster. You are looking for hope everywhere you look, while being overflowed with information that you are still trying to grasp.

"How did this happen to OUR child?"
"What went wrong, what did I do?"
"What does the future hold?"

There has never been a moment in my life that I considered Noah anything short of a miracle. ALL children are miracles, but Noah has stunned the medical world with his progress. Even at times when I heard the words, "Noah has to go back to surgery.......again", a time when I just wanted scream, "WHY HIM???, WHY DOES HE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS?" He not only overcame everything, he did most of it in record time. Is it possible to forget every surgery your child has gone through? I know I can sit down and write it down, but it is a moment you anticipate, you dread, you look forward to, a moment when they are going to help give your child life, but at the same moment, take him from you loving arms, when you have nothing to do put put all your hope in miracle workers, and sit empty in a waiting room where you actually count down every single minute of the 6-8 hours on the ticking clock. The best way I can describe it is to think of holding your breathe for that long. Even the moment when you see the surgeon enter the door, you sink farther in the hole, until he smiles at you, giving you that instant moment of knowing he made it through surgery. The surgery itself is just one major part of it. Then you still deal with the progress and set backs that come in the ICU. It really never ends, but you take life minute by minute, because that is what you have at the time. Sitting back and looking at those memories, I still can not believe that Gabe and I survived that. It was never easy, but it was a time in my life where I proved I had more courage than I ever thought possible.

Even when he has a doctor appointment scheduled for nothing more than a check up, I feel a sinking pit in my stomach. As he lays in in a dark room, getting an echocardiogram, my mind transforms itself back to watching a small baby laying sedated as I try to read the sonogram machine, like I have any idea what I am looking at. I blink and realize that I am watching an amazing 9 year old boy, who grows and thinks and learns and absorbs every bit of the world around him. He has an amazing future ahead of him, a future that I feared for every minute of his precious life.

Noah is doing amazing. His cardiologist said we could not possibly hope for anything better at this point, in fact, he is doing better than ever could be expected. He is a miracle and has baffled the medical world. He has every bit of confidence that he will grow up to be an old man with grandchildren running around driving him nuts.

That is my son, my Noah.