Owen’s Leukemia – Day 27

What started off as a relatively normal morning, became quite scary, very quick.  After breakfast Owen started complaining about his heart beating fast.  All of the other times this has happened, it usually ends after a short time.  This morning, it kept doing it and didn’t seem to stop.  I called the nurse at the Oncology unit and told her the issue and how he is scheduled to get this fixed this Wednesday, but it seems worse this morning, so she suggested we head to the ER.

In the ER, the guy came over to check us in and do the initial screening that is in the waiting room.  The room was packed, so I thought we were going to be there a while… He checked his heart beat and was like “that is really humming along, we need to get you into a room”.  A few minutes later, we were in a room.  That nurse listened with her stethoscope, then immediately put the pulse ox monitor on his finger.  Next thing, she ran out of the room, back a second later and was like grab your stuff… we are heading to Trauma.  OK, I am freaking out.  She told me his heart rate was 240!!  (but “don’t worry, he is going to be ok”.   We get into the Trauma room and there is a team of about 10 people there waiting… all lights on, type of scary.  The doctor explained that he had Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) which is when the heart is beating very fast (between 200-300 bpm).  There were a couple of ways to get him to come out of it, put a bag of ice over his face for 20 seconds or give him a medicine.  They then began to give him the IV in his hand which made him scream and yell, which was actually good, because that brought him out of it on his own.  They continued to monitor him, did an EKG, ECHO and x-ray.  They were deciding if they needed to move his procedure sooner or if it was ok to leave it on Wednesday.

After talking with the Cardiologists, they felt it is fine to wait until Wednesday as long as we were comfortable with that decision.  They explained what we need to look for and what we should do if this happens again before Wednesday.  We just had to wait for the OK from our Oncologist to make sure he was ok with it too.  Meanwhile, they would not let Owen eat anything because they did know if they were going to admit him or do anything today.  This did not sit well with a little boy on steroids that is used to eating basically every 1/2 hour.  Poor thing had to wait till about 3 pm before they let him eat.  The ended up releasing us, gave us a stethoscope and sent us home.

What a crazy day.  I can not wait till they move that line from his port and he stops having these heart palpitations.  They are too scary.