Last week Eli had a sedated heart echo and check up at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Oh, what a stressful time! Eli had woken up Monday morning with fever, but we had to leave Monday and stay the night in Salt Lake City for the appointment on Tuesday. Taking care of a sick baby on the road... I don't recommend that. Thank goodness my mother and sister were able to come with me. (Matt, my husband, stayed home with our 3 year old and finished packing the house. Oh yeah, we moved last week. Stress.)
That night in the hotel my mom and I got a combined total of 2 hours of sleep. Eli could not rest because he did not feel well. But up and awake we were at 6am to give Eli his last bottle before the sedated heart echo and to be at the hospital by 7:15am.
Eli has had one sedated heart echo before. But being so young (3 months old) he was able to take the sedation medicine orally. Not this time! His sedation medicine has to come through an IV. Understand that he already did not feel well because of fever and was very cranky because of lack of sleep. So when the IV team came in and started touching him, he let them know he was not a happy camper. It took three pokes till they found a good vain. Lots of crying, lots of kicking, and a very stressed me. They finally got a good stick and off to sedation echo at 8:30am.
Eli was so tired he only took half the sedation medicine alloted through the IV before he conked out! The echo began and Mom saw for the first time what Eli's heart looks like. She calls it an "open mouth bass," and kept wondering what we were looking at. It is pretty weird picture: the two chambers on top are connected, making one big chamber, then there is one big ventricle on the left side. And that is Eli's heart.
Afterward Eli went to recovery for an hour and a bit to let the sedation medicine ware off. Wondering what an echo is? An echo is an ultrasound of the heart. They like to do this every once in a while to see how the heart is functioning in real time... gives much more info than an x-ray. Children Eli's age are sedated because they need to be very still for 45 min or longer. Make sense?
Met with the doctor after Eli fully recovered. There are concerns, one being the narrowing of the pulmonary artery on the right side where the stitching from the surgery took place. This can be typical in those who have had Glenn Shunts procedures. The worry is that the narrowing will cause a low blood saturation. Eli is already at 80 to 85 percent, so he does not need to go any lower. If this becomes a bigger deal before his next surgery--which is next year--then they will need to fix it before then. That is done through a cardio cath. They will run a line up his groin artery to his heart then expand a balloon to open the narrow pulmonary artery.
AND I just got a call from Eli's cardiologist at Primary Children's saying that his EKG from last week shows some issues. Great. So tomorrow we are meeting a new cardiologist in Boise (because we moved) and are having another EKG done. Now an EKG is just stickers on the chest and measurements taken that way... not to big of a deal. Goodness, I hope everything is okay. It is okay that I cry a little, right?
