That is the WORST THING

Wren is such a worry-wort.  This evening, as I bent to kiss him goodnight he whimpered and moaned.

"What's wrong?"  I asked him.

"A splinter in the eye is the WORST thing," he said, clutching his eye dramatically.

"It is.  You don't want a splinter in the eye.   But it won't happen to you because you are right here and I am keeping you safe."  I said, placatingly.

He whimpered and groaned.

"It is so bad....an eye splinter!"  he thrashed around a bit in bed.

"Where did you get this idea from?" I asked, hoping to blame popular culture [aka Adventure Time] or Joshua.

"I just THUNK it."  He said, disarmingly.  "Now I can't unthunk it from my mind."

"Its okay," said Josh, coming in to sing the next song.  "You only get splinters like that from woodworking and that's why you wear goggles when you do woodwork.  When I do cutting with a saw I always wear safety glasses or goggles.   Just this weekend I did cutting wood and I wore goggles."

He appeared satisfied with that.

I share his worry.  Since our visit to the URGENT CARE at Children's to check for Strep throat, I have been worrying about his low blood pressure readings.  One of Wren's active issues in his heart is his aortic stenosis.  This narrowing in the outflow of the left ventricle makes his heart work harder to push the necessary blood volume to his body.   Over time, the heart grows thicker as it has to work harder (hypertrophy) and a side effect of this intensification of muscle fibre is that the wall of the heart is less elastic and cannot either open as widely or push as hard.   As this advances it is called Heart Failure and is measured in stages.  I believe that Wren has been in a very early stage of it all along as his heart is a little thicker and at times he has had issues with early pulmonary hypertension (backward failure of the left side).  Anyway, low blood pressure can be a symptom of heart failure.  Wren's BPs may be normal for him but to me it looks as though they are drifting downwards.  18 months ago I have a reading for him of 100/60 while the doc in Urgent Care got 90/50 and 85/45. 

So, I guess I have to buy myself some safety goggles to prevent any Bad Things from happening and try and keep my center for another month or so as we prepare for the next cardiology clinic.  Hopefully, there heart things will be more or less clarified or at least taken out of my hands by someone who knows which splinters in the heart are the worst ones.

Sore Throat and Sunshine

We are having 3 days of fake spring in Seattle and Wren continues to have a sore throat.

This morning I am taking him to the after-hours clinic at the Hospital to have a strep test.  Its ironic, because his fever is gone for the first time since this started on Wednesday night but apparently this is still a good idea.

He has had all the symptoms.

Meanwhile, all this time at home with Wren has given me a chance to do some housecleaning and resume typing up the diary of my great-grandfather.