Hawaiian "getaway"

This trip all started because of some heart "episodes" I've been having. They started when I was pregnant with Rowan, never fully went away between and started up again stronger this time. They were infrequent enough that I thought it would be hard to catch through monitoring, etc. so although I mentioned it to providers, no one was too concerned and I never had it investigated. This changed when I had 2 episodes while at work (and I just happened to be working with my midwife and had her feel my pulse-although really you can see my heart beating crazy through my scrubs) and she decided to set up a holter monitor, echo, and cardiology and maternal fetal medicine consult.

I did the holter in December and luckily caught one episode in the week that I was wearing it. Turns out I have some atrial flutter (both the episodes and some in the background occasionally that I don't even really notice). I then had the echo done which thankfully was normal (yay!) MFM did an ultrasound and baby's heart and everything else looked perfect so no worries there :) However, because of this flutter they determined I needed a cardiology consult (since internal medicine here didn't really want anything to do with me). And since we don't have a cardiologist on island they said they'd either do a teleconsult or send me to Hawaii...and I got "lucky"! 

They called on a Tuesday I think, and we were scheduled to leave Sunday. I was authorized one non-medical attendant, so Grant got approval from his command was was able to come with me (and was also paid for!) We added Rowan as a lap child and were ready to go (read lots of paperwork and craziness in the meantime but it eventually all worked out!) I got my work schedule rearranged, Grant cancelled his patients and we were ready to go!

We flew out Sunday early afternoon and arrived in Hawaii Sunday at 6 am (the time change is so weird, 19 hours!) Rowan did awesome on the plane. He only had one little freakout when it was the middle of the night, all the lights were off, he'd been asleep for 3 hours and then they decided to wake everyone up an hour before we landed...he wasn't a fan. But it worked out. We wheeled him around the airport on our suitcase and it LOVED it (so did everyone walking by :)

 In Tokyo we had a decent length layover, so we found a lounge that our new credit card let us access for free ;) We enjoyed some ramen and Coke Zero (no diet coke since we weren't in America yet :)

 It felt good just to land in Hawaii. I hadn't been to America in over a year and there was so much I was excited about. I told Grant that it was the first time I'd been to Hawaii where I was probably more excited about the food and shopping than the beach. And how convenient that the cardiologist is in Hawaii, not Oklahoma or something :) The first thing we did was check in at the hospital and then were off to find a hotel and decide what we wanted to do (after taking a nice long nap!)

 Tripler Army Medical Center

After our nap we decided to walk around Waikiki and grab some dinner. The possibilities were endless. All we knew was that we wanted anything besides Japanese food. And where better to start our week of culinary joy than Cheesecake Factory! I also was blown away by how gorgeous the weather was. We have pretty nice weather for the winter here, but it was a good bit warmer and still sunny with blue skies. It was gorgeous! And going from one tropical island to another, you can't help but compare...Hawaii definitely takes the cake in a lot of ways.
 I have so many fond memories here too from my semester at BYU Hawaii to our honeymoon and then a family vacation after graduation in 2012. Love it. It was our first time going with a kid and I have to say it was equally as enjoyable. He was AMAZING during the whole trip.

 We found out that these long rows of surf boards off the beach are actually like rental lockers for personal boards. I thought that was a pretty fun idea to be able to leave your board there and just go surf whenever was convenient :)

 Yum...chowing on our "brown bread" waiting for the main entree...

 What kind should we get? "I don't know"! Of course lemon raspberry won out like it does every time

 And as we walked back to our car (parked in the zoo lot-the BEST place to park...only a dollar an hour and right on the strip)...Rowan totally passed out. So we let him sleep while we enjoyed our Cheesecake looking at the ocean. It was a warm and perfect night.

We had already had so much and the week hadn't even started yet!