Daily Maintanence

Minor updates...

Ford has been moving in and out of 'heart block' over the last few days. I believe they first noticed it after restarting his regular medications, which were held for a few days following his seizures. Cardiology is seemingly scratching their heads as to why this has happened. The irregular rhythms are timed with his doses of metroprolol, one of the heart drugs he's been on for months now and has never reacted badly to before. The unsatisfying shrugs, followed by: well, we know he did this after his Glen, so we're not really worried, were accompanied with a pro-active change in his medications today. But unfortunately the new drug, carvedilol, also seemed to trigger the same funky rhythm immediately after it was given this evening.

The weird rhythm, called "winky back" (causing Christa and I to snicker and mutter off-coloured jokes about the "science" of cardiology), is actually "Wenckebach" (causing Christa and I to feel embarrassed and sit quietly while we are schooled by the science of cardiology), which causes a strange phasing of the electrical signals in his heart across several beats, eventually getting so far out of sync that he drops a beat. Even though his heart rate quickly slows from the 140's to the 80's shortly after the heart block kicks in, as longs as he doesn't exhibit any other signs of distress (extreme drop in blood pressure, drop in O2 sats, cyanosis, etc) he isn't in any immediate danger of kicking the bucket (incidentally, kicking-the-bucket is another misappropriated term from the dictionary of cardiology, which actually refers to Willem Kikntëbôkt, a 16th C. Swedish anatomist who first theorized the link between Incomplete Kardiac Electrical Activity and imminent death. If you don't believe me, type 'IKEA' into wikipedia for a disambiguous reference)

Next up, I ought to have knocked-on-wood when I pandered to the now relatively insignificant status of Ford's lung function in my last post, for today, spurned and enraged, they decided to exhibit their wrath via a pleural effusion - which is a leaking of fluid into the pleural cavity that surrounds the lungs. This can be very dangerous if it is not immediately treated with the surgical insertion of a drainage tube into the chest, but since neurology is anxious that Ford not go through any more surgeries in the near future (though this mostly applies to heart surgeries), folks seem reluctant to go that route. And assuming the effusion remains minor it should be successfully removed by the increase in his diuretics that they ordered this morning and a longer than expected wean from the Bipap.

Behaviourally, Ford was much more alert today than he has been since the seizures. Even though the bipap mask obscures most of his head, forces him into an almost constant cross-eyed stare, blows cold, pressurized air all over his face, and prompts him to produce disgusting amounts of frothy, bubbling drool (or "happy bubbles" as well like to call them), he managed to remain awake and calm for an unusually long period of time. We spent much of the day reading to him (Christa from "Global Babies" and I from "Under the Volcano"), to try and stimulate and/or salvage his "speech and language" centre. As well as lots of cuddles and play time, paying particular attention to his right arm, which was moving more today than it yet has, but is still pretty much dead weight.

And so it goes.