Irv Update - January 2011 #4

Yesterday when Irv and I went to the hospital to check in for the surgery it was found that not only was his glucose level quite low at 65, but his heart was in atrial fibrillation and his blood pressure was low and irregular. He was taken to the Intermediate Cardiac Unit and started on IV's with glucose boluses, and he was placed on a continuous heart monitoring system. Some medicine to hopefully get his heart to start beating regularly was added with another IV (so now he had two going) as well as an initial bolus. (My sister Kerrin was called immediately and she assured me it was the correct medicine, but I don't remember the name right now.)

Obviously, surgery was canceled and today Irv will have at least an echocardiogram to check out his valves, etc. A series of heart enzyme and heart functioning tests were done and by the time I left about 8:30 pm they were all negative. I'm pretty sure that means his heart is just beating irregularly and not that he has had some sort of heart damage due to that.

A nasogastric (NG) tube was placed thru his nose into his stomach to get rid of all the build-up of fluids. No only to make him feel better (except for the NG tube, which is a pain) but to see if that was one thing contributing to the heart problem.

Meanwhile, the nurses kept checking his glucose levels, which refused to stay up. One IV was giving him glucose, but they couldn't run it very fast in case it overloaded his hearts pumping ability. So, he kept getting boluses of a high glucose solution.

Irv was dehydrated - another reason perhaps for the heart a-fib?

He has lost about 40 lbs in less than 6 weeks.

I'm on my way to the hospital now. Lots of conferencing will be done by all the medical team to decide when to get the surgery done. It HAS to be done so everyone just has to agree on when it would be safe.

Trav and Casey are leaving today.

I'll keep you updated when I get any news and can get to a computer to send the info.

Penny