Josiah smiled for us today and so did we. We met with Dr. Lucas this morning (our pediatric cardiologist here in Greenville). Our oppointment, for the first time in a while, gave us an oppertunity to get some good news. Dr. Lucas looked at Josiah's heart and said that he was more encouraged than he was expecting to be. He was specifically looking at the blood flow between the left and right atriums and making sure that the opening between the two atriums had not closed any more. He doesn't think that there has been any change since the defect was found at MUSC. He also thinks he found a "new vessel" leaving the left atrium and attaching to the superior vena cava. I had to ask Dr. Lucas to stop at that point and explain what he meant by a "new vessel." He went on to tell us that in rare cases it has been found that the heart can create different pathways for blood to flow. He explained to us that it was a possibility that when Josiah's heart found that blood could not properly flow from left to right atrium that it could have created a new vessel for blood to leave the left atrium. CRAZY! What this means for us is that if what Dr. Lucas found, is in fact there, we don't have to worry as much about the opening between the atrium closeing in utero because blood has another option for leaving the atrium. So it reduces the chances that they would have to deliver him prematurly, making his chances of survial greater. As any good doctor would do, when Dr. Lucas saw the smile on my face he made sure to remind us that despite this new finding our little boy would still be born critically ill. He will still have to be taken immediatly after birth to have the catheritization done to open the hole between atriums. At that moment though, it was great to hear some positive news rather than more neative news and so the smile remaind on my face. I can't believe what a complex and amazing thing the human heart is and to me it points directly to a even more complex and amazing creator.