Mike headed home about 8:30 to relieve Christine and because the parking lot closed. At least we think it did because of our visit last week. Then about 10pm my nurse came in to check on something and she heard a rapid heart rate on the monitor even though it wasn't registering. She moved the sensor around and captured it but it wouldn't stay right unless she held it. She sat with me the entire time chatting and watching. This run lasted for over an hour. There was another run Thursday morning around 6am for an hour and then again around 11am for over an hour. That last one the perinatologist was able to come down and do an echo. He was glad he had a chance because there were two possibilities for the arrhythmia and the echo clarified it was, as suspected, SVT [superventricular tachycardia]
That was a rather long night because the headache I had from around 8pm turned into a migraine. Tylenol wasn't touching it and the resident thankfully gave me some Fioricet and my nurse brought me ice. Which I found out in the morning wasn't actually ice - they wet newborn diapers and freeze them. Works awesome!! Stays cold for a really long time too. I'll have to keep that in mind.
After viewing the echo, Dr R consulted with a pediatric cardiologist Dr O, and the decision was made to start medication. The drug of choice here is digoxin at mega doses. It is tricky because the line between therapeutic and toxic for digoxin is small to begin with and the target level for fetal SVT is up there near the toxic level. Strangely enough Dr R says it is almost impossible for pregnant women to get toxic because we pee too much! And there is that stereotype for a reason :) More on my levels later but I seem to fit the pattern.
Dr O will be in charge of LBC's care once born. He is a very nice guy. I saw him once when I was pregnant with Ryan for a consult. And several of my friends have used him for years. Heart kids never really get discharged from the cardiologist - they seem to be followed for years.
Once the medication was started we only caught one more run and that only lasted 20mins or so. Conveniently this one was Thursday night while my OB was visiting so she got to see the babe in action. The OB and I also talked about why she had ordered betamethasone injections. This is a steroid to speed up the babe's lung maturity if they have reason to suspect early delivery. Turns out she didn't have any particular concern but felt there was no downside to giving it and only potential for regrets if we didn't. So I got my two shots in the butt over two days.
At this point Mom had driven over from Vermont, Christine had the kids again and Mike was starting to stress over work. And my back and hips were protesting loudly about being in bed with limited movement [due to the monitors.] Mike left for the night. He could have stayed but I saw no reason for him to sleep in an uncomfortable recliner. I had a horrible time trying to sleep and the monitor kept slipping whenever I gave up and moved. Somewhere near 3?4? the resident came in and offered some Ambien. Normally I'd reject that but it was so hard to get comfortable and they really needed the monitors to stay in place. That was quite an experience. Never felt like I was truly asleep, with weird 'daydreams' but the nurse said on Friday morning they could see I was sound asleep based on my pulse ox [monitors pulse and oxygen saturation]. In fact I was so out of it my oxygen levels were quite low. [no idea Mom how low and no one is concerned about it, okay?] But no more Ambien!
Next installment soon....
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