Bitty is being tested for SVT, or supraventricular tachycardia. What we know is that she is experiencing an extremely rapid heart rate that seems to have no immediate (external) cause. The good news is that it really doesn’t seem to bother her, although occasionally it makes her dizzy* enough that she needs to sit down.
*When the heart is beating that quickly, it’s not pumping oxygenated blood effectively throughout the body. The dizziness is a result of that brief lack of oxygen. Think of the feeling you get when you’re blowing up a balloon; it’s like that.
She was fitted with an ‘Event Monitor’ yesterday; it will record an episode when she pushes a button. The monitor consists of two sticky pads that attach on either side of her chest and the monitor itself – a small round piece of plastic with two buttons – one to record an ‘event’ (the rapid heart rate), and one to send the information at the end of the day. I have a feeling that the company that receives this info is going to get pretty irate at us pretty fast, as Bitty seems to press the send button every time she plays.
It’s hard to look at this kid and say there’s anything wrong; she looks perfectly happy:
Well, I take that back. She is pretty much fed up with the monitor already; it is impeding her play time and that’s important when you’re six.
The plan is for her to wear the monitor for 30 days in the hopes of catching the rapid heart rate. However, there’s a chance that if she has quite a few episodes sooner than that, she won’t have to continue to wear it the full 30 days. So… if it’s going to happen, we’re hoping for sooner rather than later; she keeps begging for me to take it off of her, and I don’t know what to say to convince her to keep it on without scaring her. Right now I’m sticking with, ‘you NEED to keep it on’ and some, ‘because I said so’.
That’s all I’ve got for now – thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers.
Philippians 4:6
