Family update

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

Here is the story behind some of my cryptic tweets and FB status messages. Sunday Austin (my nephew) had what is best described as an anxiety attack, and couldn't get his heart rate under control. So he went to the E.R. The tests at the E.R. indicated that he there was undergoing some heart failure. Given the fact that he was diagnosed with Coronary heart disease last summer this was not good.

So he was transferred to Denver to Children's hospital, where he could see the doctors who were more familiar with his case. Initially they didn't see the failures that the Memorial Doctors saw, but they went ahead and performed a heart catheter on him. The results of the catheter were that there was some damage, that parts of the heart were dying. This is the news we had Monday afternoon and really all we had until yesterday afternoon. Which explains my dire tweets and status messages.

Yesterday they (Connie, Tammy) had a meeting with the Doctors where they discussed the overall findings of the catheter test as compared to their findings last summer. The long and the short of that meeting is that he has not progressed or declined from where he was at that time. Which means that he can return to the way his normal life was before this weekend. But they have switched one of his drugs, in the hopes of fostering more arterial growth to compensate for what is failing. And they will be having him come up to Denver for testing more often. I guess they were hoping from more progress over the last 6 months or so, so that prompted the changes. But the overall prognosis is not nearly as dire as we were initially led to think.

I want to take a moment to thanks everyone for all of their best wishes, thoughts and prayers over the last couple of days on FB. It really helped get through a tough couple of days. The kids bore up pretty well. I had to explain to James that us keeping the cousins for a coupe of nights was just what we do as a family, we pull together, just like Connie and Tammy watching Emily last week for all of those days she was sick. I think he got the picture, although he was still quite happy to see the cousins go home anyway.