Tuesday, April 28, 2009

April 28, 2009
Well, we’ve had a little bit of a setback. Lynn is back in the hospital, and she is likely to be there for at least two days. There is a problem with her heart rate. When someone goes through open heart surgery, as I related earlier, the heart often has a difficult time recovering from just being handled, and stopped, during the operation. Any problem with the rhythm of the heart is call arrhythmia, a potential byproduct of this handling. The rates can be of three types: It can beat too fast, beat too slow, or go into an irregular beat. Lynn’s heart has shown a tendency to beat too fast, tachycardia, and that’s why she is back at Riverside.

We started out pretty good. She got home Saturday night, and was feeling OK. She had had the fast heart rate at the hospital, but it appeared that it was under control with pills, so she was given the green light to go home. The highlight for her was taking a shower for the first time in 5 days – she said she never had a better shower in her life. Lynn tried to sleep in the bed, but could not get comfortable. It was too hard for her to breathe with her lying flat on her back, so she ended up sleeping on the lounger on the sofa. That seemed to work out well for her.
The next day went pretty well. She had a rough time moving around without getting winded, however, and that was worrisome. One of the things she brought home was a breathing exercise machine…you suck in a lung full of air, and see how much you can move the needle. She was supposed to get to 2500, but only made it to 1000. As part of the operation, the surgeons deflate her lungs… we were wondering if maybe something had gone wrong on that level, and that she wasn’t getting them filled up properly. Sunday night was not good…she simply could not get comfortable, and spent a restless night on the sofa.

The next day, Susan (who had come down the previous night) and Jo took Lynn to the radiologist. Her surgeon wanted her to get an x-ray to see if there was some fluid build-up in her lungs that was causing the deflation issues. He would meet with her the next day, Tuesday, to discuss the results. Well, Lynn started to get winded, then dizzy, as she was heading out to the car. Then, because she was so dizzy, she threw up, which must have been absolute agony for her. Susan and Jo got her back home straightaway, but she was still sick the rest of the afternoon. Dr. Blossom had Lynn stop taking the blood pressure pills…this made a great deal of sense since her blood pressure was already too low anyway! And, when I got home, I picked up the prescription she had that had been screwed up for the proper pain medication. One way or another, she started feeling much better, and the dizziness went away.

That night, she tried again to sleep on the bed – no luck…it still hurt too much. She then went down to the sofa lounger and had a little more luck, but still didn’t do all that well. This morning, she had her appointment with Dr. Blossom to review the x-rays. There was no fluid buildup in the lungs, which was good. However, they found out that the rapid heartbeat was back again, this time at 150 bpm, and he immediately had her readmitted to the hospital.

Right now, they are trying to get the rate down, and have succeeded with an IV administered drug. Tomorrow, they will do a cardio-echo, if the rapid rate continues, to see if there is visible reason why the rate is staying too high. Then, they will try electrocardioversion…this is a procedure where a shock is administered to the heart to try to jolt it into a normal rhythm. This is normally considered to be a safe procedure, as safe as can be expected, but it is still something that they hate to have to do. Of course, if her heart comes back with the medicine, they won’t have to do it…that’s what we’re shooting for.

Lynn’s hospital phone number is 614-544-7761. She is in room 2004 at Riverside.