One of the things I LOVE about my husband is his ability to become an expert in things overnight. His research skills are phenomenal and he has a great memory for detail! He already throws around medical terms with the ease of a resident.
Today the Dr. went over everything that is going on with Isaac.
On his last two ultrasounds he had all kinds of abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) & today we discussed them in more detail. When I called Andrew to relay my discussion with the Dr. he knew the definition of all of them.
Here's what is going on with our little boy.
(Although Andrew might be able to better explain these things!)
- Tachyarrhythmia - An excessively rapid heartbeat accompanied by arrhythmia. (Arrhythmia is an irregularity in the force or rhythm of the heartbeat.) The issue with tachyarrhythmia is that it makes it heard for the heart to fill all the way, so less blood is pumped through and oxygenated.
- Fetal PACs (Premature Atrial Contractions) - premature heartbeats originating in the atria, but not in the sinoatrial node (the heart's built-in pacemaker). PACs can be symptomatic or asymptomatic. In Isaac the PACs seem to be triggering tachycardia, so they are symptomatic.
- Fetal SVT (Supra-ventricular Tachycardia) - an arrhythmia characterized by an excessively rapid heart-rate originating above the ventricular region with a 1:1 ratio - meaning the whole heart beats at the same high speed.
- Fetal Atrial Flutter - an arrhythmia characterized by an extremely high atrial rate with an Atrioventricular (AV) Block (this is actually a good thing - the AV node cannot conduct the high heart rate to the ventricles so the ventricles beat at a slower rate than the atria). In Isaac's case it appears to be a 2:1 ratio, with the atrium beating twice as fast as the ventricles, but the sonographer has not been able to measure the rate of the atria during some of the episodes.
- Fetal Atrial Fibrillation - This is similar to Artial Flutter, but the heart beats are chaotic and irregular, so there is no obvious ratio.
- Valve Regurgitation - During tachcardia, and sometimes normal (sinus) rhythm, the valve (I think Aortic, in Isaac's case) doesn't close tightly enough and allows blood to flow back into the heart. In Isaac this is presumed to be caused by all the tachyarryhthmias and should resolve once everything else resolves.
I have another amazing RN today - Sarah. She was a doula and is now a nurse. I am her only patient, b/c they've discharged a lot of patients. We walked/rode around the hospital, talked a bunch, looked through old pregnancy books from the 70's & 80's that she found when she was reorganizing the antepartum unit nurses station.
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