Surprise! Happy Birthday, Gabby!

Today was Gabby’s Birthday and for those keeping track, events seem to happen on some significant day (e.g. Easter, Mother’s Day, Canada Day, 5th year wedding anniversary, Gabby’s Birthday). Once again, Hudson is admitted to BC Children’s and we expected it this time. Hudson was very irritable this morning and inconsolable. He was upset so much that he started to drip sweat and we had a cheatsheet of warning signs to watch for CardioRespiratory failure and he was matching a lot of them. For the most part, I have not been concerned about things happening here and there, but this morning was different and I was in a bit of a panic asking myself, "is he really having congestive heart failure? What changed? It can’t be that sudden? Maybe the increase in calorie milk? We just changed that yesterday… " so many questions running through my head at 4:30 in the morning… I paged the cardiologist on duty and after talking briefly he thought that its possible the increased calorie formula might be irritating him… he had a big bowel movement part way through his screaming and yelling…

So I couldn’t sleep after that and I couldn’t stop thinking about what’s going on… I put my hand on his chest and I had a thought in the back of my head that his heart wasn’t beating right… wasn’t consistent… … hmmm… I grabbed the stethoscope and listened to his already unique heart that I have grown to be very accustomed to and it’s unique sound with the shunt making the whooshing sound with each beat… But this time the whooshes would skip beats… I was wondering if it was my imagination that this has always been the case… So a few hours passed and Gabby and I were about to give his 630am medication and we thought we better ask first…. and then after talking to the cardiologist again about the irregular heart beat, he thought we better bring him in. We knew what that meant…. he was most likely going to be admitted for observation again… we packed a few things and after a quick call to the in-laws who have always been so so so so SO VERY helpful I don’t know what we would do without them, they showed up and Gabby and I went to Children’s.

After describing what I could hear in the stethoscope, I must have thought I was imagining things because the nurses in emergency and doctors couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary until the cardiologist I spoke to on the phone came down and I described it to him again… he listened for a while and then.. he finally turned to me and said, "ok, I hear what you are talking about…." He looked up on the monitor at his heart telemetry (the typical wave/spikes you see on any heartbeat monitor either on TV or in hospital), and he saw the irregular heart beat and pointed it out… it was now very obvious once you could see it on the monitor…. and it was happening more frequently…

…. it was now a waiting game and hudson was admitted to ICU (PICU) for the next 24hours to start.

Dr. Human (head of cardiology and Hudson’s cardiologist), mentioned that his tricuspid valve (the valve basically taking all the pressure of blood from his lungs and body at the same time) is in a moderate stage of regurgitation (on a scale of 1+ to 4+ with 4+ being severe, he was a 2+). What does this mean? He may have to have his Glenn, the second stage surgery sooner. What does it mean to have it sooner? his 2 superior vena cava (SVC… and having 2, which is another unique feature of Hudson…) may not be full size. So 2 things, it’s harder to operate on, there are 2 of them to operate on, and since he will have them "stitched" early, they may need to be stretched through another cath procedure in the future. It also means we will have to have it done in BC. Gabby and I would have wanted to have it done in Edmonton because the surgeon there has seen inside Hudson but he is off all of August.

Around 4pm today, Gabby and I took an hour to ourselves to go to the Papaya Hut for quick eat together. I then left for home to pick up our other two to prepare them for bed… and it’s now time after this somewhat quick update…… and my poor Gabby has to be in hospital with Hudson on her birthday…. Sorry kiddo’s 🙁 love you both and we’ll make up the time. See you tomorrow.