Like I mentioned before, we met Dr. Womack when Aiden was first diagnosed with HLHS. Dr. Womack quietly and sympathetically explained to us the reality of our situation and we could tell that it was not an easy task for him. He told us that he would support us in any decision we made and he made sure we knew we could contact him with any concern or question. Our respect and appreciation for him began on that first day and has only continued since then.
Dr. Womack met with us three different times over the course of my pregnancy. He checked Aiden's heart and then spent most of the appointment helping us sort and understand what we could expect when Aiden arrived. He provided us with the information we needed to make the best decision possible for our family. He kept a "big picture"mindset and encouraged us to do the same, telling us to always look at the horizon instead of focusing on the fear and the uncertainty of the current moment. He told us then (and continues to tell us now) that sometimes our decisions may seem irrational, but just because they are irrational, does NOT mean they are unreasonable. And that's okay. He constantly tells us this and after all the decisions we have had to make in the last few months, I think I'm finally really starting to understand this concept.
When Aiden came almost three weeks early, he surprised everyone. Aiden was born at 9:37 PM on the 16th of October. Dr. Womack had plans to leave the country on the morning of the 17th. But he was there to meet his newest patient the night he was born, staying late to perform an echocardiogram on Aiden for the first time outside the womb, get him situated in the NICU and begin the process of getting us transported for surgery. We were so grateful that he went out of his way to be there despite the inconvenience that I'm sure the situation created for him.
When Aiden's oxygen levels started to drop a few weeks after we arrived home from San Francisco, it took a little bit of time to convince Dr. Womack that Aiden's heart was to blame. But this is actually one of the things we really love about our doctor. He is not the kind of doctor that automatically attributes everything to the heart; he fully realizes that other factors exist, and a number of things could have cause the symptoms that Aiden exhibited, the biggest being illness or a virus. When you have a baby with CHD, a lot of times this becomes the only thing that people see. If all that people can see is the glaring heart defect, other causes might be missed. Aiden is not immune from any other problem just because he has heart disease. When finally it became clear that the issue stemmed from Aiden's heart, Dr. Womack did his best to avoid having to send us back to San Francisco. We saw the difference between our cardiologist and the cardiologist on call the day we arrived at the hospital. The on-call doctor was ready to send us with our bags backed the next day to UCSF. Dr. Womack knew that there were things that could be done here and while ultimately they did not work in Aiden's case, it was reassuring to see our doctor's extended knowledge and experience. Brent and I quickly learned during this time that our doctor knows what he is doing and that we can trust him 100%.
Now, since we have been home the second time, I feel like I email Dr. Womack every day with questions. And he always responds very quickly. He always reassures me that just because I have one low oxygen reading, plus the baby is crying and probably not breathing very well (because he was crying) does not mean that anything is wrong. He has explained this same concept to me multiple times with slightly different situations. And I finally feel like I am getting the hang of it...until something new happens, and off I rush to send our doctor an email. But he always responds, no matter how silly the question might be, because he gets it. He knows it's challenging as a parent to know if everything is okay, especially when we are so new to this world of CHD.
Aiden went in for a planned catheter procedure about a week and a half ago. Dr. Womack performed this cath and while Aiden recovered, he had some issues with bleeding from the entrance sight. Dr. Womack came up to check on him a half a dozen times and when we couldn't get the bleeding to stop, he sat down in the rocking chair with Aiden and applied pressure himself for about 30 minutes. During that time, Aiden got hungry, so Dr. Womack fed him. Although I wasn't there to see it myself, hearing about it later made me smile.
We are in good hands. We have the best cardiologist around and we know it. He knew when to ask me to start keeping a detailed record of Aiden's low oxygen levels. And then he knew that we needed to move Aiden's surgery to an earlier date and he got it rescheduled for us within a few hours. He has gone above and beyond to help not only Aiden, but his parents deal with the uncertainties of CHD. We love our cardiologist!
(One of Dr. Womack's other patients that we know shared this video a while back. It shows just how much his families love and appreciate what he does!)
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