I will try to get right to the point.
One - I do not have any answers yet as to what, if any infection C has. She had been running a relatively low grade fever until around 1:30pm yesterday. Then she spiked a temp over 102. That gets the doctors here pretty nervous so she had blood drawn for cultures, a chest xray done, a nasal swab for viral panel and then an attempt to cath to get urine. There was no urine obtained so we went to plan b which was to tape a bag over her area and see if we could collect the urine that way. No go. After like 5 times (over the course of 10 hours) the nurse decided that she would need to do another cath for urine. C was finally starting to feel better , broke her fever and was smiling and talking, and I figured we might as well go ahead and do the cath at night (10:30pm ish) so as to not wake her in the morning. I so regret that decision...way more than I can possibly put into words. Which leads me to -
Two - She screamed bloody murder during the cath (don't blame her one bit) as soon as it was done, I picked her up to calm her down and she seemed fine. Laid down right against my chest and shut her eyes to go to sleep. The nurse comes running back in like 2 second later all concerned by what she is seeing on the monitor. C went into SVT or Super Ventricular Tachycardia. SVT is where the heart beats way, way, way too fast. At one point I saw C's rate at 299. Just to keep things interesting she would follow that up with going into Brachycardia (or bradycardia...not really sure what the term is), which is when the heart beats way too slow. Of the two, brachycardia is the better as the heart is not working so hard. C's rate went all over the board for about 2 hours until she finally settled into a very high rate with breakout SVT into an even higher rate for the last 4 hours. A normal heart cannot withstand long bouts of SVT without intervention. C's heart is even more delicate as we really do not want her heart working harder than absolutely necessary (hence the surgeries to separate her blood flows and work load on her heart). She has already received several ekg's to try and capture the arrhythmia problems and she has been given medication to try and slow her heart down. Nothing really doing right now. I am supposed to see the electro cardiologist first thing this morning and maybe get a better idea of what is going on. This is really scary. I am beyond terrified. The worst part is that no one knows or can figure out why she is in SVT. She has never done this before and has not ever had signs of it. Her rhythms have not ever been a problem. She had a sedated echo in the morning after her g tube was placed and the results came back as perfect. Her heart looked great, her function great, the repairs great. So far the doctors are stumped but I am praying really hard for some answers in a couple hours.
Needless to say, I am begging everyone to say a prayer for C. I have been up pretty much all night with her and I just cannot consider that she will not pull through this. This arrhythmia problem she is having is one you see right after surgery, not 8 to 9 days post op. It can be treated with medications, you just have to find the problem first. I am trying really hard to not do the what ifs but I am tired and scared and can't help but think what if we just took her home Monday and came back for the g tube. Would she have avoided getting sick? Could she have avoided this new heart problem? What if I delayed the cath. Would she have freaked out so bad in the morning? She had already been through so much yesterday and was this just the final straw on her stress? She hates being here now. She screams and cries when she has to lay on the bed for the nurses. She is so over being messed with. She is still hungry and not feeling well from having not eaten anything in well over 24 hours to prepare for the g tube. She ran a fever for over 30 hours and just felt sick all day. I have been trying to tell myself all night to trust God. God knows what is best and everything will work out for C the way it is supposed to. But I am having a really hard time with that right now. I am not prepared to not be bringing C home this time.
I will do my best to send another update once I have more information from the cardiologists. I guess one good thing is that I have yet to see a doctor in her room and you always know it is really serious when the doctors start showing up. I cannot promise I will get back here to update anytime soon so please bear with me. I so appreciate you all and all the people who are praying for C. Please., please, please send the word out...we need them now more than ever.
My mom is here with me (and has been since I called her at 1am) and Kevin is on his way back to Tampa right now.
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