Well folks, it's been a couple of months. It's interesting to look over the last post, and notice the general idea of the fact that you never know the burden someone is carrying. Interesting, because I've been carrying my own since Spring Break.
I don't know if many of you know, but my son has always been pretty ill. By age 3 he was diagnosed with acute cough variant asthma. Around the same time he also had some left hand surgery for a venous malformation that he was born with. While at Johns Hopkins for the surgery, he was also diagnosed with a heart condition known as SVT (super ventricular tachycardia). This is where the heart rate will just speed up for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes there are triggers, and luckily we know what his triggers are. And when he is having an episode, we are trained in maneuvers to try and keep things under control. Since his condition was recognized and diagnosed so early, they're hopeful that he can outgrow it (and maybe the asthma too). Well, the day before Spring Break, my daughter was rushed to the hospital from her school via ambulance. She approached my wife in the building (who happened to be subbing that day) and said her chest hurt and that it felt like her heart was racing. Immediately she was taken into the health room, and through the experience, my wife thought it was all too eerily familiar to what our son goes through. After arriving at the hospital, her heart rate steadily went down over a three hour period. She was to follow up with our pediatric cardiologist over break. She was put on a 30-day halter monitor to try and record any abnormal activity. Wouldn't you know it, that she would have another episode two days after break was over, at school again, requiring another trip to the ER in the ambulance. This time they took her to Johns Hopkins instead of Howard Co. Luckily she didn't need meds to bring her heart rate down, but it did take a while for it to naturally slide. That day she was prescribed meds in an attempt to keep her in a normal "sinus" rhythm. Overall she's had a total of five episodes since that Friday before break. The most recent happened while on the meds, which means she is "breaking through" the prescription. Thus they've doubled one of the meds and she will require heart ablation surgery this Summer. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it as soon as we wanted, so it will be in late July. My wife and I know that we are fortunate. Things could always be worse. That's what we hold on to on a daily basis. However, it's hard to sleep, worrying when the next shoe is going to drop. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers while we hope to get our daughter healthy again and try to achieve some normalcy in our daily routines. Thank you.
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B.D.SchmittHusband, Father, Archives
November 2015
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