Bitty is dealing pretty well with the event monitor that she has to wear. She’s only required to wear it while she’s awake, although the other night it was beating so quickly that it woke her up; I groggily awoke to a high pitched gurgling/whimpering noise. I almost took out my nightstand in my frantic attempt to get to her, then scooped her up and held her until she fell back asleep. It took me a long time to work up to leaving her room, but I needed to go downstairs and tell MC what had happened.
Thankfully though, that doesn’t seem to be the norm.
{Getting the monitor}
She cried when I asked her to attach the leads (the wires that connect to the monitor) to the electrodes stuck on her chest this morning though. So far we haven’t caught an event, due to the fact that most of the time it’s almost impossible for the adults to tell when it’s happening. She definitely knows, but she’s so busy that she doesn’t take the time to tell us, or even to push the button on the monitor herself. We only find out later that day, when we’re asking the questions about ‘crazy heart’ (her words) that she realizes she forgot to tell someone.
But back to the subject at hand: How did we wind up with a six year old wearing a heart monitor?
We were packing for our spring break trip down to Arizona and I realized Bitty had been a little under the weather. Runny nose, tired and a tummy ache, but no fever or vomiting. I packed her off to school and realized that if she did have something more than a cold and we had to take her to an urgent care down south, our insurance would blast us with some ridiculous ‘out of range’ fee. So, in the interest of her health and our financial security, I made an appointment to check for what I thought could possibly be strep.
The nurse did the quick strep test and then the Dr. came in to check her over. He went to listen to her lungs and immediately sat back, looked at me and said, ‘so, how long has that been going on?’
It was when Bitty answered and said, ‘Oh that happens all the time!’, that I sheepishly had to admit that I had felt it once before. I left the pediatrician’s with a script for an antibiotic (the strep test was positive) and instructions to get an EKG.
Side note: why do I most often see the abbreviation as EKG, when the test is an electrocardiogram? Granted EKG is easier to say than ECG, which sounds like you’re sneezing if said too quickly…
So right now, we sit in a kind of holding pattern while we wait to figure out what’s going on. Is this SVT? Will it go away on its own? I don’t have any answers right now, and that is more frustrating than anything; some kind of diagnosis would as least lead to some kind of known action on our part, instead of this standing around feeling useless, and sometimes, helpless.
Philippians 4:6
