What Evah! - Someone Tweeted "Dental Floss"

Kris with little sis Poppy

My DS is annoying, however I still love him and want him to have the surgery he needs and then get back to North Dakota so I only have to see/hear from him when he needs to know how to cook something or has a tummy ache. I'm sure he thinks I'm annoying too.

Someone Tweeted the words "dental floss" and It brought back memories of his childhood. I have to start with his birth - I'll try to be brief.

When I was pregnant, I knew something was wrong, so when Kris was born, I wasn't surprised. I told my DH too. He knew I was pretty good at predictions. The hospital staff were a little shocked at how well we took everything. Kris was a blue baby, very serious heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. Meaning his heart was basically deformed in many areas. His was pretty severe, and he needed a temporary fix at 3 days. He did well.

Things looked good and the docs said he would probably need open heart correction at 5. He went in for an evaluation at 14 months. The results? He needed surgery soon. I was thinking maybe in 3 years. It didn't really sink in. They said they'd like to set up surgery in the next 2 weeks. My heart stopped beating.

Although the 6 hours in surgery were the worse 6 hours of my life, it all went well. They did what they could in the 6 hours allotted for the heart lung pump and he would last for about 15 to 20 years more with luck.

After that Kris developed normally. Still many problems but his height was normal, often Tet kids are stunted, but not Kris. He was pretty active too, but was he ever skinny. Guess that's why he did so well. He was also odd in that he only liked to eat veggies, grains or a bit of healthy protein, no sweets or fats. He would still rather have a Pizza than a Birthday cake and that's what I had to make him every year.

Of course he was teased by the neighborhood kids for being such a twig. One day one of them said "you're as skinny as a toothpick", and another said "that's too big, he's more like dental floss" and so the name stuck. For the rest of the time we lived in that neighbor hood, all the kids called Kris dental floss. When I first heard it I had to LMAO. It really was kind of clever and if you saw just how thin he was you might agree.

Kris had a second open heart surgery at 19 to replace 2 valves and open his pulmonary artery, and for the first time in his life, he had a nice solid "normal" heartbeat. Of course there was the metallic click of an artificial valve, but it was a nice normal rhythm. Now the vales are leaking and he needs a little more correction. He will need little fixes for the rest of his life.

We've almost reached our goal to get Kris to Cleveland Clinic in July. Thank you all so much. If you would like to find out more. You can HERE and BTW, he is not as skinny as dental floss these days :)