Bitty is doing pretty well with Simon* and even reminds me to put it back on her in the morning.
*the heart monitor. Yes, she named it.
{Bitty & Simon}
She does come straight home and try to take it off, but she’s supposed to wear it until bedtime; it only takes a little bit of convincing (read: candy) to get her to snap it back on. The little stickies that hold the electrodes onto her chest irritate her skin and leave little red circles. I know that’s what’s bothering her about wearing it so I let her keep it off last weekend. (Bad parent, I know…)
Funny story: I took Bitty to the birthday party of a friend from school last Saturday. When the other little girls at the party saw her, they yelled ‘Bionic Bitty!’ (Okay, they did not yell Bitty; they yelled her real name. No, Bitty is not her real name ; ) Calling her Bionic B--- is how we convinced her that wearing this monitor would be cool – I guess it worked.
Anywho, here’s the information that I currently have: so far the monitor has only caught what the lady at the U* called ‘sinus tachycardia’, which I think is just a fancy name for ‘elevated heart rate’.
*that’s local speak for the University of Minnesota. Bitty is being seen at their pediatric cardiology specialists office.
A normal ‘resting’ heart rate for a child her age is around 75-115. When Bitty is pushing the button on the monitor, it’s catching a heart rate of 150 to 160. Sometimes. Because other times, it’s only reading 102 and I think she just wants to go sit in Nurse A’s office. Because Bitty thinks Nurse A is the bomb diggity and she has a white board in there that Bitty draws pretty pictures on.
The way it was explained to me is that the cardiologist is looking for a heart rate above 200; that is what they described as SVT. I don’t think they’ve caught anything that high on the monitor, although we’ll have to address why she’s having a resting rate of 150-160 at some point in this process.
{Mom! Take my picture like this!}
That’s really all the information I have right now. We will meet with her Dr. soon to discuss the results of monitor and to see what we do next…
