Update on being sick and cardio news

First, the update. Connie is still sick. His fever is gone, but his cough is the same and he's been complaining of pain in his left ear as well. His pediatrician changed his antiobiotic from Amoxicillan to Augmentin. We're supposed to check back in three days to let him know if he's improving. The biggest problem is his sleeping is all screwed up. He's waking 4-5 times a night either in pain or just not feeling well and because of this, is napping about three times a day! He's just been miserable and whiny and not himself.

Now for the cardio news. I got a call out of the blue today from his cardiologist. He said that he's been thinking about Connie for weeks now and is wondering if he's feeling better since we took him in right before Christmas. If you remember, he had had two little scares with high heart rates and vomiting and acting like he was in flutter again and both times checked out okay. Well, Dr. Bromberg did look at his late December echo the day after it was done and it did look to him like the LV function might be down a bit. Of course, he wasn't in the office to examine him and his partners read the echo and compared it with Septembers and saw no change, but he said it was different and it may just be that a different tech did the echo than the one that normally does, or it may be that his Left Ventricle is indeed not squeezing as well. Either way, he wants to see him sooner than the Feb. 15th appt. we had set up and make some adjustments to the pacemaker settings. We're going in next Thursday and he wants another echo and to change the pacer. He might try uncoordinating the V pacing from the A pacing. What can sometimes happen in patients who are artificially paced is a weakening of the LV over time. He suspects that what might be happening is that when his atrial rate is increased (illness or whatever) that it is forcing the ventricle to do the same and overworking it causing it to weaken. This is generally not a problem once children get older and have a much lower resting heart rate. For now, we know that Connie's rate does increase on occasion for no good reason (that we can see anyway) and for this reason, we think pacing the ventricle in a different way, one in which does not correspond directly to the atrial rate, might help his function improve. It might not. It might cause other problems. We won't know until we try and for now that is the plan. After it's adjusted, he'll wait for feedback from us on what changes, if any, we notice in his energy level, sleep, etc. Then he'll repeat an echo 4-6 weeks out and see if there is any noticeable difference there.

While I was surprised in a negative way to hear from Dr. Bromberg, I can't explain to you how good it made me feel. I mean, he's been thinking about my boy since before Christmas and trying to figure out exactly what could be triggering this and he thinks he's got a solution now and that's pretty neat. I don't think there are that many doctors that try so hard for one patient.