Friday began as a normal day at our home.  Tim went off to work and I began preparations for a follow up appointment with our pediatrician, Dr. Knochel.  Neither of us expected what would happen in the following days.

The appointment was at 1:30pm.  He was going to look at his circulation, breathing, and check his weight.   His weight looked great and his coloring and stats as well.  However, his breathing concerned him quite a bit.  Joshua's breathing rate was very fast and he was sort of struggling to take breaths.  After having us wait for about 45 minutes and checking his breathing rate a second time, he sent us to Utah Valley hospital in Provo for some testing.

Once at the hospital, Joshua had to have his blood drawn--not a pleasant experience for such a youngster.  Actually, not pleasant for any age!  Anyways, I helped them draw blood and take x-rays by holding our sweet little Joshua.  Tim came from work and met me at the hospital to help watch Logan.  They went and looked at the Life Flight helicopter, which Logan enjoyed too much and wanted to see more helicopters. 

After the test results were sent to Dr. Knochel, he called us immediately to let us know that he was still concerned.  The idea at the time was a possible respiratory infection--one which would be hard for a young baby without a spleen or immune system.  He advised us to drive up to the ER at Primary Children's Medical Center.  We quickly packed our bags for two days, thinking we would be back by Sunday evening.  We dropped Logan off in Sandy, where Emily and Paul took Logan for the night.  Upon arrival at the ER at 8:30 PM, they took us back immediately and started tests.  They performed the same tests as Utah Valley Medical Center did and got the same results.  The on-call cardiologist was called and she came in.  By now, a few hours had passed.  Another test was done to see if it was a respitory infection, which came back negative.

The cardiologist almost sent us home, but decided that perhaps we should keep him at the hospital overnight to monitor him and have an echocardiogram done in the morning.  (This ended up being one of many tender mercies of the Lord to our family although it didn't seem so at the moment)  She also said he might start a medication called "Lasix" to reduce the blood/fluid in his lungs; the flooding of the fluid in the lungs was believed to be the cause of the heavy breathing.  We then waited 1.5 hours for a room on the third floor to be prepared.  After it was ready, we were transported to the room.  By now, it was a few hours into Saturday morning (2:30 AM).