Emergency room madness

[corlee1289]

I just had to drive Daniel to the emergency room because his heart rate was over 200 beats per minute. 

I'm hoping he'll be fine, the doctors are having difficulty bringing his heart rate down despite having injected him with a bunch of medications. 

They informed me that they'll need to put him to sleep in order to shock his heart with some electricity in order to bring back his heart rate stable since the drugs aren't doing anything at all. 

We were immediately admitted at 11:30PM and have been here for two hours and counting. 

Comments

[corlee1289.livejournal.com]

We mistook Daniel's lethargy and his other symptoms as a cold, which ended up really being something more serious relating to his heart. What it really was, was his heart was starting to malfunction so all his fluids were starting to get backed up in him.

He had no fever and he was pale with coughing and a runny nose, so we thought it was just a virus or a cold. But when he complained that his heart was beating really quickly, we got worried. I tried to take his pulse, but I couldn't, so I drove him to the ER.

When we brought him to the emergency room, the nurse tried to use the heart rate machine and it couldn't read him, then the nurse tried to manually count his heart rate and couldn't do that either. So he was immediately brought to the trauma unit and injected him with many doses of drugs in order to help slow down his heart rate (as it was beating over 200 beats/minute). When that didn't work, they wheeled him to the ICU to jolt his heart to reset it.

He's fine and stable for the meantime, but they're going to keep him there to monitor him in case if he relapses. The doctors are also 'hmm'ing and 'ahh'ing him and thinking what to do about his situation. They're contemplating about putting a pacemaker in him, but they're still thinking about it.

[showjuro.livejournal.com]

That's terrible! You mean his heart beat was too fast for the machine to detect it? Whar do you mean by 'so all his fluids were starting to get backed up in him'?

How old is he?

I sincerely wish him the best! It's good that he's stable for the moment.

[corlee1289.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the simple normal heart rate machine wasn't able to get a reading, so they brought him to the trauma room and stuck the sensors all around his body to be able to count his heart rate.

The doctor explained that fluids in his body were starting to get back up, so fluids were starting to leak into his lungs (causing him to cough), as well as into his nose (runny nose). So she said it was normal for people to mistake these symptoms as it being a cold.

So thankfully, I when I went to try to take his pulse, I myself couldn't do so, so that's when I rushed him to the hospital realizing that something was drastically wrong.

He's 14 years old, which he's now legally able to make any medical decisions on his own, but the doctors still like to talk to the family~

He'll be doing an operation on Friday to get a defibrillator implanted in him so that it will monitor his heart in the event this situation occurs again, in any case, my dad and I will be going to the hospital to speak in more details with my professor.

[showjuro.livejournal.com]

Hehe, doctors usually talk to the family if the patient is young. Do you know what caused the fluids to get back up and enter his lungs?

[corlee1289.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that is true, however in Canada, once you're 14 years old, the person is able to make their own legal medical decisions by themselves. But I'm glad they did do so~

What the doctor explained was that because his heart was beating so fast that it started to no longer pump fluids/blood properly because his heart was really strained.

So that meant, instead of squeezing his blood, it was just shuddering and wasn't pumping the blood/fluids. Therefore it started to back-up into his other systems.

The main take home message was that Daniel was having the heart arrhythmias a few days before, so his heart was already strained, therefore presenting symptoms that looked very similar to a cold.

It was only a few days later, on Thursday evening, that Daniel FELT his heart beating really fast which led me driving him to the ER.

[showjuro.livejournal.com]

I see. I don't think we have any legal age to make medical decisions over here. This is the first time that I have heard of such a thing.

Do you know what was causing the heart arrhythmias?