Check out What the Duck. It’s a hilarious comic strip centered around a duck photographer. After the hundreds I’ve read, this is still my favorite.

Here’s one of the ones that I ended up liking a lot. It was a cloudy, rainy Friday last week and I decided to take a bit of a walk-about during my lunch hour. I headed down to the Chattahoochee River, which runs through downtown Columbus and just happens to be a few blocks from my office.

I ventured out onto the rocks just below one of the mill dams and saw this Heron hanging out near the falls. Trying not to spook him, my goal was to use a slow enough shutter speed to show movement of the water, but also keep it fast enough so it would freeze the Heron. It’s not the most crisp image of a Heron that you’ll find, but overall I think it works.

Once shot, I did a little post-processing in Lightroom 2 to make the bird “pop” a little from the white background.

We had a great turn-out as you can see. Thanks everyone!

Somebody must think Elliot’s ready for potty training.

Look at that look of fear.

I’m still working on the layouts and what not so please be patient if something doesn’t look quite right.  Thanks!

A couple weeks ago we sent a heartfelt email to Elliot's cardiologist at CHOP in Philadelphia.  We were concerned because Elliot is still on oxygen 24/7 and is slowly needing more to keep his saturations up.  We've read several stories of kids that were on oxygen before going in for their third HLHS surgery, the Fontan, and their lungs not being able to handle the additional bloodflow provided by the surgery.  The docs then have to go back in, undo the surgery and put them on the heart transplant list.  We didn't want that to be the case with Elliot.  We want him to ready for his third surgery so that everything goes by the book and we can move past it. 

We got a response back from the cardiologist and we were surprised to hear that he wasn't aware that Elliot was still on oxygen.  This struck us as a little crazy since our local cardiologist had just written a letter asking what could be done for Elliot's lungs.  It seems odd that he would never mention that he was still on oxygen.  So Dr. Rychik, our CHOP cardiologist, suggested we come up to Philly for a heart/lung cath to see exactly what was going on.  The plans were made and we made the two day trek up to Philly about a week and a half ago. 

We were only there for a short time, arriving on Friday for check-in and pre-op and leaving on Tuesday after he was discharged from the cath.  With the heart/lung cath, they were looking for a few things in particular:

1. What is the blood pressure in the lungs?  This was a major concern for us.  The entire HLHS repair requires low blood pressure in the lungs.  If the pressure is high, the third surgery wouldn't go well.  All along they thought Elliot's need for oxygen was due to high pressures in the lungs.
2. Is there narrowing of the pulmonary artery?
3. Are there any collateral veins that have formed back to the heart, allowing for a "path of least resistance" for unoxidized blood?
4. Does he have a lung disorder allowing for unoxidized blood to mix with oxidized blood in the lungs?

The cath showed that his lung pressures were actually low, which is fantastic news.  It means he's a good candidate for his third surgery coming up next year.  It also showed there was a slight narrowing of the pulmonary artery, but not enough to affect anything right now.  There were no collateral veins.  Both the narrowing of the artery and the collateral veins are things that could have been fixed with the cath, allowing Elliot to pretty much come off of oxygen immediately.  That's what we would have liked. 

What they found in the lungs is that he's got some Arteriovenous Malformation.  This is a slight malformation where the arteries join the veins to transfer oxygen in the lungs.  Basically it allows for unoxidized blood to mix with the oxidized and get pumped to the body, thereby reducing his O2 sats.  The good news is that they have seen where the third surgery corrects and reverses this phenomenon, however, they can't be sure because they don't know a lot about it.  This kid's a walking rarity…well, almost walking.

So we're settled back home now and not a whole lot's changed from before we went up there.  We're still on oxygen, but it looks like they're going to move Elliot's third surgery to sometime in January or February, earlier than originally thought.  He's still on his feeding tube, which means we have to follow him around with the feeding bag for the hour or so that it takes to run in. 

He is growing like a weed though and is developing very well.  He's very close to walking and Sunette's got him doing sign language and recognizing words.  He starts Algebra next week.

Sorry for the long post.  I'll keep you posted on Elliot.  There are a few other things that have happened, but I'm saving those for another post.  Got to keep something in the hopper.

This past Wednesday I met up with college roommate Danny, and guitar playing buddies John and Jeremy in Atlanta.  About 2 months ago Danny sprung for 4 tickets to the My Morning Jacket show at the Fox and told us all to make it happen.  Make it happen we did and we had a phenomenal time. 

We met up at the Holiday Inn Capital Grand in Atlanta and I set up my recording equipment for what would be a late night acoustic jam session back at the hotel room.  We played a little guitar that afternoon then headed to the show.  MMJ rocked it.  I mean, this was an excellent show and the crowd was waaaay into it.  If you've never heard of My Morning Jacket then you need to check them out, definitely one of the best bands out right now.  Go here and listen to I'm Amazed.  Then go here, which is a live album, and listen to Gideon, Off the Record and It Beats 4 U.  Awesome show, awesome band.

We left there about 11pm and headed back to the hotel for our jam session.  This happens everytime we all get together.  We basically stay up til the wee hours playing guitar and singing some of our favorite old songs.  I usually record the event for posterity's sake.  Here are a couple songs from that night.  Audio is embedded for those using a reader.  Come 'on to the site.

This Ol' Cowboy

Wait a Minute

This last shot is one of my recent favorites.