On Saturday, November 10th Ender started feeling sick, after he woke up he threw up a few times and was cold and clammy. We took him to the pediatrician that afternoon; the pediatrician said that he probably had a flu bug and sent us home.
On Sunday he started to get worse, he was very lethargic and we suspected that he was getting dehydrated, by midnight he stopped eating and his diaper was dry for over 8 hours so we decided it was time to go to the emergency room. We took him to the ER at Jordan Valley Hospital, he was given some fluids and hooked up to a monitor; the doctor saw that his heart was beating at twice the normal rate (about 300 beats per minute) and decided it was time to send him to Primary Children's Hospital for further evaluation.
Ender was loaded into an ambulance, I rode with him, Bryon stopped by the house to pick up a few essentials (we were still under the assumption that he was just dehydrated from the stomach flu - they hadn't explained the severity of the problem to us yet). As we left the hospital, the ER doctor gave me a hug and wished me luck and the head doctor told the ambulance driver to "get him there quick" (at this point I started to get worried); the ambulance took off with lights and sirens.
When we arrived at Primary Children's they unloaded him and wheeled him into a room where there were about 15 people were lining the walls of the room, they started to work immediately. The doctor told me that his heart was beating too fast and they needed to give him some medication to slow it down, they administered the first dose and it didn't work, they administered the second dose and it still didn't work. The doctor then told me that they were going to need to shock him to get his heart to "reset itself" and start to function normally; they asked if I wanted to leave the room, I declined so they got me a chair (I guess it's common to pass out). They put stick-on electrodes on him, called clear and sent the first shock, his heart was still racing so they upped the voltage, called clear and shocked him again. This time the heart monitor showed that his heart had reset to 170 beats per minute... fast, but normal. Right after Bryon finally made it to the hospital. They gave him oxygen, put in another IV, drew blood for tests, gave him a chest x-ray and got him ready to admit to the CICU (Cardiac Intensive Care Unit).
Bryon and I had to wait in the waiting room for about an hour while they got him setup in the CICU (the longest I had ever been away from him - it was torture). They took us back to his room where we met his nurse Carolyn, she was awesome! They were just finishing up his echo-cardiogram (an in-depth ultrasound of the heart).
Dr. Mennen, the cardiologist on call, came in and told us that Ender has Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a condition that causes an extra electrical pathway in the heart that causes periods of increased heart rate (supraventricular tachycardia or SVT). Most people with this condition do not find out until they are in their 20s. The treatment is to keep him on a beta-blocker 3 times a day which will prevent the SVT episodes until his is old enough (about 4-7 years old) to have a surgery called ablation in which they go into the heart through the femoral artery with a catheter and sever the extra electrical pathway. We also have to check his heartbeat with a stethoscope when we change his diaper. He told us that Ender would live a normal life, he can still play sports, run, do everything a kid should do! He also said that there isn't any risk of brain damage from the time spent with his heart beating too fast and his lifespan should be normal. The echo-cardiogram also showed that he had VSD (ventricular septal defect) - a hole in the heart between the ventricles, PFO (patent foramen ovale) - a hole between the atria and PDA (patent ductus arteriosus) - a small artery that fails to close off after birth. He said all of these are very small and minor and should close on their own; if they don't they will close them when the perform the ablation surgery.
He had a follow up appointment with his pediatrician on November 21st, she said he looks great, but suggested getting him the RSV vaccine. Most children are not approved unless they have heart conditions or are premature, our insurance did approve him and he will get his first dose on the 19th. We meet with the cardiologist again on December 18th, I'm looking forward to getting more information his condition and recovery.
Thanks to everyone that has helped us through this. After spending 3 days at Primary Children's and meeting children that have had open heart surgery at 3 months old and heart transplants at 2 years old... we feel incredibly lucky that our child has such a relatively mild condition.
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