Monday, February 26, 2007
Sotalol Home
They started Sweet Pea on Sotalol (a beta blocker) but it can have other adverse effects on her heart rhythmn so they did a repeat EKG after 48 hours on the medicine and all looked well so the sent us home.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
The beginning...
Sweet Pea was diagnosed with Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome at 3 weeks old. WPW is when the heart has an extra accessory pathway (electrical path) which can cause a fast heart rate called SVT (super ventricular tachycardia). For more information on WPW you can visit: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4785
When I was pregnant we found a heart arrhythmia that showed skips (PAC's) in her heart rate which is very common and most babies outgrow by 6 weeks. I had weekly non-stress tests to be sure the skips didn't develop into SVT's but the arrhythmia seemed to have resolved a few weeks before her birth.
At birth Sweet Pea’s heart rate seemed to be normal and regular, no one thought to order an EKG. The first two weeks after birth she would have episodes where she would turn blueish all over but would color back up after we snuggled her under blankets for a bit. At her two week check-up we mentioned it to the pediatrician and he said she was probably getting cold. I knew this was wasn't right but I thought the doctor knew best.
The night of the 24th of February she had turned blueish all over again and I felt what I thought was her heart pounding but it was so fast it felt like a hummingbird in there. So I called the pediatrician oncall. He told me first of all that it was impossible to count her heart rate if it was going as fast as I said it was (I timed it to be about 300bpm) and since she had started to kind of pink back up that we should take her in if she turns blueish again. He said it was not normal for her to do that but said it wouldn't help to bring her in if she wasn't blue at the time, he really struggled with this.
Overnight that night she didn't eat much at all and was pretty cranky when she was awake, she also slept straight through feedings which is not normal. That morning when we got up she was blueish and worse than ever so off to the ER we went. Sure enough her heart rate was 298, they took forever and poked her 10 + times but finally got an IV in and with a double dose of Adenosine she was converted (they got her heart rate back to normal).
Since we just had a snow storm and an ambulance wouldn’t have been the quickest/safest route, she was air lifted downtown to the U of M Children's hospital where we spent the next 4 days waiting for the final diagnosis of Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome.
When I was pregnant we found a heart arrhythmia that showed skips (PAC's) in her heart rate which is very common and most babies outgrow by 6 weeks. I had weekly non-stress tests to be sure the skips didn't develop into SVT's but the arrhythmia seemed to have resolved a few weeks before her birth.
At birth Sweet Pea’s heart rate seemed to be normal and regular, no one thought to order an EKG. The first two weeks after birth she would have episodes where she would turn blueish all over but would color back up after we snuggled her under blankets for a bit. At her two week check-up we mentioned it to the pediatrician and he said she was probably getting cold. I knew this was wasn't right but I thought the doctor knew best.
The night of the 24th of February she had turned blueish all over again and I felt what I thought was her heart pounding but it was so fast it felt like a hummingbird in there. So I called the pediatrician oncall. He told me first of all that it was impossible to count her heart rate if it was going as fast as I said it was (I timed it to be about 300bpm) and since she had started to kind of pink back up that we should take her in if she turns blueish again. He said it was not normal for her to do that but said it wouldn't help to bring her in if she wasn't blue at the time, he really struggled with this.
Overnight that night she didn't eat much at all and was pretty cranky when she was awake, she also slept straight through feedings which is not normal. That morning when we got up she was blueish and worse than ever so off to the ER we went. Sure enough her heart rate was 298, they took forever and poked her 10 + times but finally got an IV in and with a double dose of Adenosine she was converted (they got her heart rate back to normal).
Since we just had a snow storm and an ambulance wouldn’t have been the quickest/safest route, she was air lifted downtown to the U of M Children's hospital where we spent the next 4 days waiting for the final diagnosis of Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome.
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