5th Grade Graduation

The schools here celebrate EVERYTHING... last year Paige had Preschool Graduation, this year Kindergarten Celebration and today was Chase's 5th Grade Graduation complete with Pomp and Circumstance! In the beginning, We weren't too thrilled about it, but it turned out to be a nice ceremony.

If you know Chase at all, you know he gets real funny in big crowds, especially when he's leading the 5th grade! He had the craziest grin on his face the whole walk! That's our Chase! I have to admit, watching him walk in Processional to Pomp & Circumstance did get me a slight bit teary eyed! 5th grade.... crazy I know! Momma's gonna be a mess senior year!

This has been a milestone year for Chase in so many ways! Chase had a FABULOUS teacher this year! Mr. Stone handled Chase so well! We didn't have to go to the school for a team meeting AT ALL! Again, another tear when Mr. Stone gave Chase a HUGE hug on stage this morning to congratulate him! (Yes, Mr. Stone is well over 6 feet tall!! His legs are as long as Chase is tall!!)

The ceremony closed with the kids singing "Ready Set Go". Chase ended up front row, center! You all know I couldn't pass up a moment to video part of that to share with y'all!! Enjoy!

Always Helping Each Other Out...

Our kids have always gotten along well and tonight, we were able to capture it on camera!

Chase has missed some school this week for doctor's appointments and is preparing for end of quarter tests. After dinner, Kayleigh offered to help him and spent a great deal of time with him.

I absolutely love seeing it first-hand. I pray that they will always be as close as they are today.

Chase Felt Left Out...

Chase started experiencing chest pain at school this afternoon... accompanied by dizziness and some trouble breathing and fatigue. With his prior auto-immune cardiac history it scared him... and us! I raced home to get him and off we went.

After some chest x-rays and a brief exam, they deemed him in no immediate danger, so we're home tonight with no answers. We felt very rushed and are uneasy about some of the things that they said would need looked into:

1) His heart rate is low today... running 55-58. Average for a child his age is 70-90 and his usually runs in the mid to upper 80's. The low heart rate is what is probably causing the fatigue but they didn't know why it's low. This is a new problem for Chase...

2) He is running a fever - 101.4 when I picked him up, 99.6 while we were there. Because Paige is recovering from pneumonia we were hoping the chest x-ray would show he just had the same thing... nope! One of the key markers of his KD being acute is fever... so this is something we'll have to watch. If the fever continues for no other apparent reason he will need to have some labork done to rule out another KD relapse. He's never experienced chest pain with his KD though... so that is reassuring.

3) Because his left 1st and 2nd rib are fused together abnormally (congenital), the chest pain could be "growing pains" where the fusion is twisting and pulling a bit as he grows taller. Today, they felt that the fusion looked "fairly significant". We have to follow up with the specialist that did the CT scans 2 years ago so that they can compare today's chest x-ray with scans from then.

We will be following up with our family doctor, his cardiologist, and the doctor who did the rib scans in the next 3-5 days to look into some of the concerns and get some answers.

As always, Chase is a trooper and just goes with the flow!