rough day

Malachi has had better days. Not sure if he's sick or if his meds weren't adjusted soon enough as he's been gaining weight or if this started as a reaction to his immunizations from yesterday or what's going on. With his cares this morning, his heart rate starting hanging out in the 220-240 range. His temp was like 36.7 (a tad high for him, normal 98.6F is 37.0C and Chi usually runs about 36.3C) so they were keeping him cool with ice packs and things to hopefully keep away a high temp as well as help jolt him out of the fast heart rate. It's never encouraging when above his rhythm strip on his monitor it says "irregular HR". Cardiology was hoping that an extra dose of his beta blocker would help completely resolve his little runs of SVT. Well, no such luck. Malachi's heart has a will of its own. The entire pediatric cardiology department cannot come to a single conclusion regarding a definitive name for his "condition." Each cardiologist has their own ideas and the following terms have been thrown around: ectopic atrial tachycardia, supraventricular tachycardia, tachy-brady syndrome, and (my favorite) chaotic atrial rhythm.

When I left the hospital around lunch time, they had just given him a dose of ativan to calm him down. He was getting pretty unruly because they had to stick him four separate times to try to draw up some blood for his labs, but even when they had the needle in his artery (the needle would pulse with his rate) it wouldn't draw up blood. Before then, I had to leave my position holding Chi's legs down to go sit by Emerson because I was about to pass out. I called in every few hours and he slept through most of the day.

It was a blessing to have a nurse normally from the PICU today as they are more used to heart kids and that sort of thing. For instance, if Malachi were to get really sick he would be transferred to the PICU until he got well enough to be back in Infant ICU. It was a good mix of her and then the other nurse that gives Chi some extra attention (she was able to relay some of his "norms" and that sort of thing). Most importantly, I was very thankful that she kept the doctors and cardiology informed all day regarding Malachi's condition and didn't just brush it aside as "that's just the way Malachi is."

John and I stopped up to see him before and after our impromptu/unexpected date (free suite tickets to the pacer game and parking pass). His heart was pretty much still consistently inconsistent. It was still bouncing from 70 to 180--all over the place. I hate how inconsistent it looks on a monitor. Pray for the doctors to have wisdom regarding what we need to do in order to get better control of Malachi's abnormal rhythms. It's stressing his mama out.

I had set out to stay home and get a lot done today, but still trying to relax. Unfortunately, God had other plans and instead of just relying on Him, I became stressed. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day.