"Wenchebach"

This is a really funny spoof of Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback" done by University of Alberta's 2010 med school class.

If anyone is still checking up on Cooper's progress -- I've read all the hospital notes sent home for me to give our Cardiologist. Cooper was on and off the heart pump 4 times as Dr. Hanley worked to get his valve repaired just perfectly. The final time he put a stitch next to the AV Node and this is what seems to have caused the problems. (It also is what completely stopped the valve from leaking.)

Anyway, Coop's been on the holter monitor for a couple of weeks now and we had a follow up visit today. It's good news! It seems he's mostly moved out of Wenchebach (Stage 2 Type 1 heart block also known as Mobitz 1-- p waves slows until he drops a heartbeat) to Stage 1 (No idea what this is called...I learn on a need-to-know basis and haven't needed to know this yet -- p wave slows but not so much that he drops any beats).

His average heart rate is up closer to normal and it appears (crossing my fingers) that the arrhythmia is resolving on it's own. Just as Dr. Hanley predicted. All I can say is Woo stinkin' Hoo!! Frank Hanley, you ROCK!! You saved us from a completely unnecessary second surgery and a life time of pacemaker maintance.

And no, this does not mean Cooper will be allowed to play football. That would only happen if MY heart stops beating. However, karate here we come!
We're wearing the holter for the rest of the month and following up again in 2 weeks.

"I Want To Celebrate and Live My LIfe"

You think this kid needed to get out of the hospital?

Emily, Grace, and Cooper really missed each other.

Cooper saw his cardiologist this morning and is now sporting a super state of the art holter monitor that will record and transmit an ekg to our Dr. around the clock. It will even alarm them if his heart rate goes too low. He will wear it for a month to keep an eye on the heart block. (Doug and I have started calling Cooper "Wenckebach" just because it's so fun to say).

We're going home!!

Coop set off his alarm last night when his heart rate dropped to 43 and his blood pressure was low. He was fine, but from 3 am to 30 seconds ago I was afraid they would want to watch him another day.  They aren't worried at all so we're out of here!!

Cooper with the doctors and nurses from the floor. Unfortunatley I didn't get any with Drs. Hanley or Dubin.

My bags are packed. I'm ready to go.

You'll only appreciate that if you followed Cooper's adoption blog from the beginning. I was pretty funny back then. This hasn't been so fun, but here we are. Just waiting for rounds so they can give us the official good news that we can go home.

So, this morning Dr. Hanley came by while the rest of the team was here on rounds. He said, "Go home." "Cooper doesn't need a pacemaker." He explained again about this complication apologized for the challenges in communication and said this was not as smooth as usual because this kind of complication hardly ever happens. He said his educated guess is that this time next year Cooper's heart will be functioning normally. He said that if things don't get better the team in Phoenix will let him know and we'll figure out what to do together. PCH can certainly handle installing a pacemaker if it becomes necessary and if they'd rather he do it we can come back.

I said, "that's all I needed to hear." "Can you have us on a plane tomorrow because there's one leaving at 3:30?"

They took out his pacer wires today and did as much of the discharge stuff that they can so we can leave by 11 tomorrow morning. Whoo! We're going home!

(If you see my girls today, don't tell them! In the unlikely event something goes wrong tonight I don't want them to be disappointed.)

Cooper has an announcement to make.

Yesterday was awful. Considering all the possible things that could happen it was simply an emotionally up and down day, but it's been rough.

Yesterday morning I got a visit from one of the electrophysiologists who came to tell me that the chief EP person who was actually following our case but was not available, feels we are at enough risk of developing complete heart block that she's recommending a pacemaker. I said, "Stop". I was able to reach Doug and put him on speaker so we could both hear the same thing. I'm getting so tired of reporting one thing then finding out the next day it's a different story. She told us he doesn't meet the clinical criteria for requiring a pacemaker, but in the extensive experience of the Chief EP Dr. kids like Cooper usually develop complete heart block and end up needing the pacer. She said without it there is some risk of a "sudden death event". Then to top it all off she said, "but it's up to you."

We were both pretty upset, asked a few more questions, expressed our frustration at what we felt was the complete turnaround from yesterday and said we would think about it and that we wanted to talk to our doctors in Phoenix.

The next few hours involved more visits from the team that does rounds trying to explain themselves, social workers, conversations about getting Cooper on SSI, visits from our host cardiologist,  emails (from the team here) and phone calls (from me) to Dr. Stock (bless his heart he called me back from a conference.), several maddening conversations about who is actually calling the shots, etc, etc, etc.

Then about 4 pm I finally sat down at my computer to look up "kids living with pacemakers" and in walks Dr. Dubin...the chief electrophysiologist for Stanford's heart center who is actually the bottom line supervising Cooper's case while she's on sabbatical. She came in specifically to clear up the communication.

She stated her position is this: this is not a clear cut situation, however they've watched Cooper long enough to feel confident that we could make either the choice to go on home on Thursday, follow with our Phoenix team and install a pacemaker down the road if it becomes necessary OR get it over with while we're here. She doesn't have a strong opinion either way, absolutely would not let us leave the hospital if she felt it wasn't safe, and when I asked about the risk of a "sudden death event" she said, "God no, who told you that?"

Dr. Hanley our surgeon is supposed to weigh-in on day 10 which is Thursday and I will not accept his input from anyone but him. This whole thing has been like a horrible game of telephone. Apparently our host cardiologist asked for the visit from Dr. Dubin today and has asked that Dr. Hanley tell us his thoughts personally as well.

Sorry this is so long. The bottom line is still -- we wait until day 10.