Kate started the morning by passing her first hurdle... she's off the ventilator!
She was taken off the ventilator/breathing tube around 8am, less than 24 hours after the surgery. Good sign. She needed a little suction to remove fluids from her lungs - after a scary moment when she 'de-sated' (blood O2 levels dropped). It cleared up well & she's breathing well on her own. She was placed on oxygen, first through a mask, then through the 'high flow' nasal tube. They slowly lowered the levels of oxygen throughout the day, starting at 100%, down to about 40% when we left in the evening. Once she was getting O2 direct to the nose, she was able to get her pacifier back... that sure made her day! That poor pacifier hasn't come out of her mouth yet!
Kate on high flow O2 and the pacifier
Around 9am, she started to have a high heartrate, over 200bpm. This is of concern, but not abnormal for post-surgery infants and treatable. This is one of the complications that is more common to occur when this surgery is done on infants less than 3 months old (Kate's only 7+ weeks). After seeing if her heartrate would return to a normal level of around 150-160 naturally, she was still at about 190. The docs hooked up her heart to an external pacemaker set to 150 and gave her an IV drug called Amidarone to slow her heartrate. Her heartrate was pacemaker controlled at 150 for most of the day.
Kate with pacemaker
Sometime in the early evening, her natural heartrate started to compete with the pacemaker, which made for some tense moments. They bumped her Amidarone and set the pacemaker up to 160. She stabilized here for the remainder of the night.
Basically, the high heartrate is caused by an interruption in the heart timing signals from the swelling from the surgery. The repair of the hole in her heart was very near one of the signal conduction pathways. The swelling around this area interrupts this pathway and causes a different part of her heart to control the heartrate. Once the swelling goes down, the hope is that the control returns to normal.
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