One Answer creates many more.

We have finally got an answer, kind of. I got a call the other day from the Geneticists at Shands. They got the last of the genetics tests back for Garet. We have found out that he has a genetic mutation in one of his hear genes; we will just call it a bad heart gene. In most cases people never get an answer as to why this heart condition has happened. We should consider ourselves lucky to have an answer as to what has caused this. Most people are told that it can be caused by a virus or a gene mutation that is not traceable and that is what they have to live with. In Garets case they were able to locate the bad gene and tell us that it as the cause of his problems. Unfortunately it does not chance what we can do to help him. We will still continue with the same meds. This does not open any other doors for corrective surgery or anything like that. We still have to let his body along with the meds do what it is going to do. What this does mean is that Matt and I need to go in and have blood work done to see if either of us has the bad gene and that may be how Garet got it. It could be the case that Garet is the started of this bad gene and if that is the case there is no way to find out why he got to be the first in this family. If it turns out that Matt or I have the bad gene as well then we will know how he got it. I know some of you are most likely thinking that if we one of us has the bad gene why have we not had heart issues like Garet is having. Well I guess some people can carry the bad gene and it may never effect there health, or it can wait and affect the heart later in life. It is not very often that it affects people as fast as it did with Garet. So now that we have one answer it is opening the door for a lot more question. If one of us has it then we have to look at the option of what we can do to prevent it from affecting our heart in a bad way. It also brings the questions of if we decide one day to have any more children. If one of us has it and we decide to get pregnant on our own again it would be a 50/50 chance that that child would also have the bad gene. (Again we would not know when or if that bad gene would affect them.) Also if one of us has the bad gene then we would strongly suggest that our immediate family would get tested as well. That would be mom, dad, brothers, and sisters. Hopefully with this knowledge we can help to prevent this from happening to any other little ones in our family or help this from affecting anyone in our family as they get older. But anyway we have a few steps before we have to start worrying about that. Like I said it has given us one answer but has now opened a bunch of other answers we would like to have. We have our appointment on the 20th of this month for a check up for Garet and to have our blood work done. We will hope to have the next answer about 3 weeks after that. But right now we are so thankful to have Garet and to have him be doing as well as he is. He is growing and doing new things everyday. It is just amazing to watch him learn thing for the first time and see the amazement on his face.


We have his Baptism this Sunday and again we are inviting everyone out to help us celebrate and also for a cook out at our house after church. Please come and help us celebrate this special day in ours and Garets life.