Joshua had his routine 6 month cardiology appointment this morning.  Erick wasn’t able to go with us so I was pretty worried about how it would go since it took both of us to calm him down last time.  Fortunately, one of Erick’s classmates was doing her peds rotation at the time so she was a big help.  Joshua screamed hysterically while the corpsman placed the stickers for the EKG but eventually he calmed down enough that he could attach the 12 leads & let it run to get a good recording.  Erick’s classmate read a couple of books & helped distract Joshua at the important times.  The echo went fairly well, with the tech asking Joshua if we could find what was in his tummy.  We looked for a puppy, kitty, Santa, Frosty, & then got to “hear” them (when she was listening to Joshua’s heartbeat).  Josh enjoyed the “heart movie” on the screen but eventually he got tired of it & was ready to go.  They got enough of a view to be satisfied that Joshua’s heart structure hasn’t changed since his last exam, which I was so relieved to hear.  Dr. Shmorhun still didn’t think Josh will need any intervention for the next few years but that a heart cath might be needed eventually.  He gave me some recommendations for great peds cardiologists at Madigan (including one physician who actually wrote Erick a recommendation for residency, so we’ll probably go with him).  He also said that Seattle Children’s is a great place to live near just in case, & agreed that we made a good choice in choosing Madigan over Tripler in Honolulu in case Joshua needed anything that couldn’t easily be handled by the military peds cardiology department.  Josh still needs to go in every 6 months for now, but that works out well, especially since we’d want to get established with the new clinic anyhow once we get there.