Relief After Heart Surgery

On Monday, we took our oldest son, Bryce, to The Children's Heart Center of St. Vincent's for a heart surgery to identify and correct the cause of his Supraventricular Tachycardia (irregular heart beats during exertion or excitement).  Bryce decided that he wanted to take care of this condition once and for all instead of remaining on medication for it for the rest of his life.  I think his dad and I would have been content to stay on the meds, but at 16, Bryce is certainly old enough to make that decision.

I was fairly anxious about the procedure.  We have a friend whose brother went in for a routine dental procedure and came out of the anesthesia mentally impaired and physically tied to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  Now every time I approach a situation where any type of anesthesia is involved, I feel a twinge of hesitation and concern.

Overall, it turned out to be a positive experience.  We received wonderful care and consideration.  We arrived at 6 a.m. and were met there by our pastor who stayed to talk with us for a while and pray with us prior to the doctor's arrival.  Once Dr. Steinberg arrived, he prepped us on what to expect for and from the surgery.  He had to go over all the possible outcomes and it was difficult to listen to (one of the worse case scenarios being stroke).  He explained that there are three sections to the heart and complications possible with each of the sites.  The goal was to go in and locate the source of the heart's misfire (the diagnostic portion of the surgery) and then cauterize, either by heat or cryogenics (freezing) the location of the source of the problem (the therapeutic portion of the surgery).  Each would take two or more hours to complete.

Waiting in the waiting room was a bit tricky.  It always amazes me how some individuals are not at all aware of their personal space in public, since one woman plugged in her earphones and sang along with her music from time to time.  Others were merely hard of hearing and carried on loud conversations.  I would have relished distracting myself by getting absorbed in a book, but found my concentration lagging.

Still, I was very grateful for the patient liaison who came to us from time to time to let us know how things were going.  Two hours after the surgery had begun, the doctor came out to inform us that they couldn't seem to get Bryce to go into SVT.  They said his heart was doing erratic things and that it was especially difficult to fully sedate him.  He seemed extra anxious about the whole thing (although he told me afterwards that he was wishing he could stay awake for the whole thing because when he first got the meds to sedate him he felt happy and almost high).

Since they couldn't determine the location of the source of the tachycardia, they had to make a reasonable guess about where to cauterize the heart.  I think they said they found a small hole on the AV node and that often this presentation indicates a particular type of tachycardia (AV nodal re-entry tachycardia).  So, they treated it as if this were the case.

When Bryce first came out, it was hard to watch.  He was so sleepy and looked absolutely horrible.  I had to look away because it was breaking my mother's heart.  However, after a bit of time, it became almost comical to watch him come out from under the sedation.  He asked repeatedly how he got to the recovery room.  He asked repeatedly if the whole thing was already over and how could it be?

The funniest part had to be the television.  They offered a selection of 30 fairly recent movies to choose from.  Four different times, Bryce asked to go through the choices and each time he'd end with "those choices are crap."  By the fourth time, as he was cursing through the list, he said, "I bet the choices are just crap," and I chuckled and said, "Yep, you're right, they're just crap."  At one point, I put on Transformers because I knew it was a movie he had seen in 3-D and thought was amazing.  After he came fully out of the anesthesia and I was explaining the funny movie review situation, he said "They had Transformers?  Really?" (like he would have watched it, if only he had known - ha).

The other thing he kept saying was "Berka."  This is one of his pet phrases when something doesn't go his way.  It was hilarious how he would nod off and then jerk awake and try to lift his head (a no-no, because it might rupture the sites of catheter entry, where they wanted it to heal closed) and say "Berka!"  He still can't believe that he was out for almost seven hours of the day.  He finally came to more fully around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Since he managed to walk and keep food down, he was released and we went home to rescue Grandma (my husband's mother) from the little boys.  We were so grateful that she was able to come so that both of us could accompany Bryce for his surgery.  As we left the facility, Bryce commented that he thinks it probably did take care of the problem because he can already notice a difference in how his heart feels.  He said that before, when he didn't take his medication, he could feel his heart beating differently and after the surgery he couldn't feel anything out of the ordinary with his heart.   We're taking that to be a good sign, but we still have to wait to see whether or not the tachycardia presents again.

I find it amazing how quickly he healed from the whole thing.  He received the best of care while there and now is already feeling up to doing everything that he normally does.  It is hard to believe he was in heart surgery just two days ago.  God is good and I'm grateful to the medical staff of St. Vincent's for their expertise and wonderful care.