Kyle's frozen heart

Life has interesting ways of reminding us about breaking free from our daily grind. Sometimes it's a vacation. And sometimes it's getting 220 volts to the chest. Kyle tried both last week. And even after his heart was frozen, I fell more in love with the warmth inside that man. He is my life companion, my best friend and my lover and I know I'd be lost without him.

I'll save the Tahoe vacay for another post, but mention that it was a much needed break away and we both had a blast. Even car troubles couldn't bring us down. We came back energized for the grind ahead. But I don't think either of us were prepared for the events of those 3 days. 

Trying to keep this relatively short: He experienced some high heart rate stuff at work on Thursday. Like 250bpm high. Onsite EKG was showing abnormalities and Balboa wanted him transported via ambulance. Anyone who knows Kyle knows that he isn't a fan of anything hospital related. After almost 2 hours with the elevated HR, and 2 doses of adenosine, his blood pressure plumited and they decided to defribulate him, unsedated. 

It reset his heart and he claims after the initial millisecond of sheer pain, gave him instantious relief. And it was about that time that I got to the ER. His work called me that morning and made it sound like he was going in for some routine testing and may be there for a half day and I can go if I want. No mention of ambulance or puke fest he had on the way. 

I got to the ER and saw that things were much worse. His bed was surrounded by docs, EMT's and nurses and he was covered in wires. I gave him a kiss and his first words were "I got shocked" and "It felt like I was on tv!" Okay, we're gonna be here for a while. 

he made me post this. he was "resting his eyes"

We finally got moved upstairs and out of the madness of the ER around 4pm and heard the plan for day 2. An Electropathway study and possible ablation. He's diagnosed with AVNRT and they weren't going to let him leave till it was fixed. {Wikipedia is helpful to someone unfamiliar with medical vocab.}

I went for a run through Balboa Park to clear my mind from the emotions and went back to tuck him in for the night. 

running on empty

Day 2 was long. I got there at 7am to sit in for the Doc meeting and plan for the day. He got bumped to third in line, and without being able to eat or drink until after the study, we knew it was going to be a long day.

movie watching day

Around 2pm they came in and got things rolling with a dose of Valium and rolled him down to the cath lab for what was a 4+ hour study. They put him into tachycardia to find the bad node. It was close to his av node, which meant they freeze it instead of burning, because they have more control. After retesting, they couldn't get him into the crazy rhythm again, which means she fixed it. 

5 hours of laying flat and still to make sure the holes in his groin and neck from the 4 cath ports clot properly. He did get to eat (Gagillone Bros cheesesteak from his boss) which was a relief. Another overnight stay. 

The drive home on Friday was hard. All of the emotions and fears caused me to get a bit tearful. Even knowing it was over and he's fine, I think the stress of those two days and magnitude of what had happened finally hit me. Trying to be strong and supportive can only last so long in the energy sapping environment of the hospital. Lucky for Kyle, he got some drugs to aid in his sleep. I had an empty bed. We had a lot of friends and family reach out, but all I really wanted was a hug and kiss goodnight from my man. In our bed. 

Saturday morning I went for my tempo run in OB before heading to the hospital. Trying to burn off some of the "woe is me" feelings of the night prior and oh yeah, I am still training for a race. If Kyle couldn't use his heart, I best use mine to some potential here. 

Saturday was a crappy day of waiting for discharge papers. Docs came in at 9 and said all is well and we release you. What that really means is they have a lot more rounds to cover and your paperwork is not our top priority. By noon the nurses still had no idea we were leaving. I think by 2 pm they finally started pulling the iv's and removing his monitor leads. 

"Thank the maker" as Kyle always says.  We were out of there in time to see the sun set over the ocean. 

So he's out of the woods with the electric stuff but they did find an aorta issue during his echo which he's receiving follow up appointments for soon. 

He's a happy, healthy, very bored sailor right now who'd much rather be back on his bike chasing those local KOM's. Soon enough. In the meantime he had some computer games to win. #willsdynasty