rosy lips and blood tests

I've noticed a few times lately how rosy J.J.'s lips look! That's a nice treat. He has always had slightly blueish lips but now that the ASD is closed in his heart, he has more oxygenated blood to his lips look pinker!

We had his blood tested today and the INR was slightly lower than they'd like so they'd like us to increase his anti-clotting medication a bit to 2 mg/day. His red blood cells and calcium/magnesium levels were tested too but I didn't hear back about that yet. Apparently it's possible that we'll be on the iron supplement for weeks to months because he's anemic. When you lose a lot of blood like J.J. did during the surgery it can mean that you loose your iron stores and then can't replenish red blood cells quickly enough on your own without iron supplementation.

We need to go back on Wednesday for a blood test. I'm considering going to a local blood lab for that. We've always gone to Children's so that they have it on file, and they're more used to dealing with children, but if all we're testing is the clotting and they'll send the results to cardiology anyways, it might be worth it to do it close to home, especially if we need to do it 1 or 2 times a week.

Now to get him to stop being so grumpy and hitting... he was actually really sweet all day yesterday. At the end of the day we went to a park where he could ride on swings and he was super happy about that. We're all still pretty lazy and run-down and keeping around the house. It's a little hard to get on top of things, just trying to give myself space to recover if I need it. Jackie would probably like a bit more action than that, but he's finding things to do! J.J. is still waking up at nights a lot of the time and we're all a bit turned around still, staying up late and sleeping in, so we're all a bit more tired than usual too. Thanks again for checking in on us! krista