Ethan’s Journey

Person A: "Want to hear a joke about sodium?"  Person B: " Na" That is your dose of a little science geek humor. Ethan had his pacemaker and defibrillator implanted back in June 2020.  While Ethan’s one cardiologist was working on him, the other cardiologist stopped by.  He sat with me.  We discussed Ethan’s condition and how serious it was.  Then, the doctor told us it was time to start Ethan on a low sodium diet. Ethan is in heart failure. Those are some scary words that caused panic.  Is he going to die?  How am I going to tell Ethan? How do we fix it? I am the mom and the mom is supposed to fix stuff. Heart failure is defined as a condition in which the heart doesn’t pump blood as well as it should.  There are varying degrees of heart failure. Ethan has  Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy  (HCM) with restrictive tendencies.  HCM  is a disease in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick. The thickened heart muscle can make it harder for the heart to pump blood. T