Owen's Story

Well, I guess Owen didn’t want his little brother showing him up and being the only one to spend New Year’s in the hospital… Owen was admitted last night and is still there.  We went in for dehydration and ended up in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) for SVT.  If you you remember from my post regarding our last ED visit, SVT is what he had before.  They thought it was primarily due to the position of his port’s catheter.  While this is somewhat true, he doesn’t have the fast heartbeats anymore, there is still an underlying issue.  They say he has probably always had it, but his heart never was put into a position that this “extra fiber” was stimulated to cause the SVT.  (no so technical, but unless I drew a picture like the Cardiologist did, I can’t really explain it very well, sorry.)

So, they were in the process of giving him a bolus (huge rush) of fluid to hydrate him, when towards the end he went into the SVT.  His heart rate was back up in the 240’s or so.  Last time, he brought himself out of it when they tried to put the IV in his hand, but this time he was already accessed through his port so they didn’t need to poke him.  They tried to do the ice over the face, but that didn’t work.  Then they started a series of medicines to try to get him to come out of that cycle of fast heartbeats.  He would come out for short periods of time, then go right back in to them.  The Cardiologist got there, and they tried some other medicines… He decided that he needed to go up to the CICU and administer another type of medicine where he would need to be closely monitored.

They got up to the CICU and ended up not having to do the stronger medicine since he was stable on the ones that he had already been given.  They were now just trying to figure out why his heart is doing this.  They did some blood work and think that it could potentially be an infection.  We will have to wait to see the results of the cultures.  They did an X-Ray of his chest just to make sure the line from the port didn’t move since they repositioned it, and it looked fine.  They said it could have been the hydration that might have sent him it to it as well.  Regardless of what brought it on, he now is going to be on a heart medicine along with all of his chemo medicines.

The two are not interrelated.  The Oncologist came down today and said that this is not a typical thing for Leukemia patients.  It is so hard for me to grasp that 2 months ago, I would have said how healthy Owen was, all along he had Leukemia and a heart condition.

Today was a whole day in the CICU, and a whole lot of sleeping for Owen.  They didn’t move him up to a room until dinner time.  He was doing pretty good around that time.  He had woken up, wanted to eat some and sit up.  They are saying that as long as he stays stable and doesn’t go back into SVT and the test results come back negative for any kind of infection he will get to come home tomorrow.

One year ago today, I was sitting in the ER with my youngest son.  Only 2 weeks old at the time and he had bronchiolitis.   We were admitted to the hospital for over a week and sent home after that with him still on oxygen.  I thought we wouldn’t miss another new year by being in the hospital….  saying that as I sit here waiting for my in-law’s to get here so we can take Owen to the hospital.

He didn’t have a good day.  This morning he woke up and had the feeling of vomiting, but couldn’t.  Didn’t eat much and went right back to bed.  He has only been up for about 3 or so hours today, and we haven’t been able to get him to drink or eat to much of anything.  I called the on call doctor around 3 and she said to try to get some fluids in him over the next few hours and give her a call back.  He needed to drink approximately 7-8 ounces per hour for 2 to 3 hours.  He slept for about 1 1/2 woke up, we did get a little water in him as well as some toast, but not enough.  Called the doctor back around 8 this evening and she said to bring him in.  They think he is dehydrated and want to get some fluids in him before he gets too bad.  Not really how we wanted to spend the rest of the night.  I will let you know how it goes.