September 26

Kirk gave me quite a scare today. When I arrived at his room, all the doctors were standing out side of his room and the nurses were placing paddles on his chest. They were getting an EKG and giving him some medications. 

He had been having periods of tachycardia, or super high heart rate, when he was aggravated, say by moving, getting suctioned, getting a chest x-ray or getting a bath. This doesn't really indicate there is anything wrong with his heart. But is is disconcerting and not ideal. He has had several EKGs and an echo cardiogram. All of these have been fine and previously, before the accident, he would occasionally have an episode.  But is is scary and not something we want when he is so sick. So they started a medicine to try to control those. Because of the medicine, this time when he was aggravated he dropped his heart rate into the 30s.  Causing another scare. Cardiology has been to see him and will try to adjust his medications to avoid going too fare in either direction.  And of course we will continue to walk our fine line of sedation and trying to minimize drugs.  The cardiologist says his heart is healthy.

He is still fighting the pneumonia.  We continue antibiotics and Tylenol. His temperature is back around 100, lower than the 101 yesterday. His chest x-ray still looks bad but it is getting better.

He has reached a therapeutic level of heparin.  So he will stay with heparin the next three days and then we will start a stronger clot busting drug.  He did have a CT this morning to make sure there have been no changes in his brain since starting the heparin at a higher dose and everything looks fine. 

They are going to try moving his central line just a bit to ensure it isn't the cause of his heart rate irregularities.  Sometimes the line can be in far enough to aggravate the heart so they will move it just to be sure.

We are trying to wake him up again today but keep him comfortable. I may put up another post tonight but we will see.

Sidney and I swam last night. She still thinks dragging behind me by hanging onto my feet is still fun.  But she ends up working pretty hard in her class and started to learn a flip turn last night.