The Beginning of the End - Part 2

I remember that I ran into my neighbor - I think it was on the way to the hospital or maybe when I was outside on the phone with the heart transplant coordinator - and told her what was happening. I felt frantic.

I parked at the lot the ER and walked as quickly as I could. Thankfully it wasn't very busy inside and I went right up to the front desk, got a visitors badge and was directed back to G's room. He was in a bed, sitting up and talking with his nurse when I arrived. It was a relief to see him. He hadn't arrived too long before me and so I remember that the an ER worker came in to get G to sign insurance forms and stuff and the nurse left for a bit. He was hooked up to a heart monitor and I could see that his heart rate was still in the 180s. He told me that the paramedics had wanted to give him an IV shot that would try to reset his heart but he had refused and explained that he'd had a heart transplant and his doctors needed to know what was happening before he was treated. There were lots of people coming in and out of his room but there was more a feeling of concern than panic. The ER staff was trying to get his doctors on the phone and get them in the loop and they were coordinating with the ER doctor too.

It looked like he was having ventricular tachycardia which is really dangerous and was not only extremely taxing on his heart but could also cause him to have a cardiac arrest. Their sense of urgency in getting his heart slowed down was increasing.

Finally everyone coordinated and decided to start him on a smaller dose of the medication that the paramedics had wanted to give - and that they would do it with a doctor and multiple nurses in the room and be ready in case something went wrong. He had an IV placed in his hand - which always hurt - and was just feeling absolutely miserable. I was scared. It all seemed so risky when they explained it to us. They laid him down flat and gave him the dose. They warned him that it would feel awful, like a bus hitting his chest as his heart rapidly slowed - but nothing happened. His heart didn't respond. More calls and coordinating later and they decided to do a higher dose. This time his heart temporarily slowed a bit but when right back up to the 180s. I'm not sure if we did it another time or tried another medication. I remember they had tried a couple other things - I think one was baring down like you were going to have a BM? So odd. But nothing was working.

His heart had been in the 180s for hours at this point and they were worried about his heart being taxed too much and suffering damage. The next step was to do a cardioversion - to shock his heart back into a regular rhythm. This terrified us both. He asked if he would be asleep and they said no but they'd give him medication to stop him from remembering. But this was so scary because he used to have an internal defibrillator and had been awake for shocks multiple times. The trauma of that led to nightmares and anxiety and phantom shocks even years after the defiibrillator was removed. He KNEW from experience what its like to be shocked and was terrified. And I was terrified because it was so risky. I think it was then that I started to think he might die. I was so surreal. To go from watching a Steelers game at home the night before to this. I felt woozy, like the room was spinning. I had to sat down. I remember I started to cry and gave him a kiss on the cheek or the lips. He tried to reassure me that it was going to be okay but I was so scared that I was about to lose him.

Our least favorite heart transplant doctor came in at that time - he came to watch the procedure and was explaining to us what was happening and why G's heart would be in V-tach. There were multiple nurses in the room - everything and everyone was getting ready. And then suddenly when the doctor was talking, G's heart went back to a normal rhythm. We had to get the doctors attention to show him. We were all shocked and oh so relieved! They brought in the EKG machine to check the rhythm and figured out that G had been in atrial fibrillation, not V-tach after all. They didn't know why it resolved itself but said that afib can come and go like that (and in retrospect we realized that he'd probably been having it all those times when we thought the pulse oximeter wasn't working.

It's kind of a blur from there, but they sent him home. We were so relieved he was coming home and pretty stunned and confused by what all had happened. He had to start a medication to hopefully lesson the severity of afib in the future. He also had to go on blood thinners because afib can lead to stroke. We were told that sometimes this happens to transplanted hearts just like it does in normal hearts. That this would've eventually happened had the heart not been transplanted and so it was just a normal process and something to take care of - but there was no sign from the doctor of alarm or that this was a bad sign. More like something else to be managed.

We drove him and stopped at Chick-Fil-A on the way for dinner in the drive through. It was beautiful fall night - just one of those perfect blue skies and puffy clouds and cool breeze kind of nights.

We got home and walked slowly back to the house. P saw us from a distance (where he was playing outside with K) and yelled and came running over and just held onto us. We found out that he had been so upset by the events of the day that he had thrown up. He never throws up. Has only done it twice in his life from being sick. But he had rushed inside to go to the bathroom and thrown up all over the place. Poor little guy was so scared.

That evening I remember G being in his favorite place by the ottoman and me sitting with P on the couch and him sharing how scared he had been. It was heart breaking. We tried to reassure him and give him lots of love and snuggles.

We were exhausted - and the next day I think G napped a little longer and maybe skipped most of staff meeting on Zoom but then we were right back at it- homeschool, ministry on the computer, trying to keep life going. We didn't have any idea what the next few months would hold.