Dr. Parikh's drawing of Colleen's heart condition. The blackened area at the top is where the coarctation occurred.

Looking back, the fact that I thought she had a cold or the flu was worrying me to no end. Three weeks seems so young to have to fight off some virus!

After talking to my mom, I decided I didn't want to wait any longer. I had to call Troy because I needed him to take us to the doctor, since my car had a flat tire. Still, I was not frantic, so I just asked what would be a good time for him if the doctor wanted to see Colleen. Troy said after lunch would be good. It was about 11 a.m. then.

I called the office and told them what was going on. The nurse on the phone said from the symptoms I had given her, she felt we should play it safe and bring her in. She said, "If Colleen were a little older, I would say to wait it out and see what develops. However, since she is so young, we like to catch these things early." The earliest appointment available was after lunch.

I grabbed a bite to eat, but something about Colleen was really bugging me. Around 11:45 a.m., I just sat down and watched her. "Why aren't you waking up, baby doll?" I kept thinking. I also started wondering if her color was odd and her breathing was fast. After getting myself a little worked up, I said, "Alright, now you are just making up things to worry about!"

Troy picked us up around 12:15 and we got to the office a little before 1 p.m. In the car ride, I sat next to Colleen to keep an eye on her. After seeing her in the sunlight, I decided that her color was definitely "off," but still thought I was being paranoid about her breathing. Our appointment was for 1:10 p.m., since the office is closed for lunch from noon to 1 p.m. The nurse I had talked to, Susan, happened to be in the office and let us in. She even got us started, checking Colleen out and weighing her. She said right away that her respirations (breathing) were high. Susan took Colleen's temperature twice and said, "Yeah, this baby is definitely hypothermic."

As we were weighing her, the doctor walked in. Susan said something about the boy in room 2 needing a treatment of some sort, but that Dr. Gilliland needed to see "this baby" (Colleen) right away. She said, "she is very sick." The way she said it shot through me. Dr. Gilliland looked at her with shock on her face and asked, "What's wrong?" We had just seen her the week before for a well-baby visit and everything was well! I could tell from her look she was trying to figure out what could possibly have gone wrong in that short period of time. Susan said, "her respirations are very fast and her heart rate is high. She's hypothermic, too." Dr. Gilliland looked completely rattled, which sent a shiver through me. (Seeing my calm, rather unemotional pediatrician with a flicker of concern on her face woke me out of my "you're just paranoid" stupor.) She said, "ok, I'll be right there."

When I got back to the room with Colleen, I looked at Troy and said, "the nurse thinks she's really sick." A minute later, Dr. Gilliland showed up and started asking questions. She put the stethscope on Colleen and did some thorough counting of her heart rate. Dr. Gilliland is an extremely thorough doctor and does this at every visit, so I wasn't too surprised. She asked me a lot about some virus related things - was she coughing? how long was she eating badly? running a fever? anything else? Nothing really related, but I was racking my brain trying to think of what I could have missed.

Colleen was born with a heart murmur - a "hole in her heart" or VSD. Dr. Gilliland found it at Colleen's first check-up, when she was just a few hours old. The doctor ordered several tests, including a chest x-ray, and EKG and an echocardiogram. All of the testing showed that the hole was very tiny and it was her opinion that it would close up within a few months. These defects are extremely common and most children are totally unaffected by the holes, which often go away with no treatment whatsoever.

Dr. Gilliland said, "I think the VSD is causing her some problems." After letting that sink in, Troy said, "How is that possible? I thought that would go away or, if it caused problems, it would be over time. How could it have come on so fast?" She said she agreed, it wasn't just the VSD. There had to be some kind of secondary infection that was stressing the heart and, with the VSD, the heart was working overtime.

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