The week started boring enough...nothing much happening besides a leaky sink...
And kids sleeping in our bed...exactly where were we supposed to sleep?
Followed by a little basketball and then the excitement started. We were supposed to pick up Jeff, head home and do some yard work to prep for Jeff's research group coming over. However, that isn't exactly what happened. When we picked Jeff up from CNU he kept saying that he felt like he couldn't get enough oxygen. He wasn't sure what was going on and part of me though he just needed to go home and sit on the couch to catch his breath (it had been about 6 months since he played basketball and it was an intense game...he did win 4 out of 5 games, just in case you wanted to know.) It wasn't until we were about a mile from the house when Jeff started saying "Your a wonderful wife, and a wonderful mother..." that I decided maybe we did need to make a trip to Med Express. When we arrived at Med Express and I mentioned that my husband was blacking out they freaked out said they couldn't see him and then asked more ?'s. Since Jeff hadn't blacked out they checked w/the doc and decided they could treat him there with out sending us to the ER. (And they still made us wait for about 20 minutes in the waiting room.) When we finally got into a room and the nurse started checking vitals we could tell something wasn't right. His pulse was extremely high (190) and his blood pressure was about 80/40. The nurse talked to the doc and they decided to do an EKG. As soon as they started getting the EKG reading the nurse started going crazy and immediately brought in the doctor. (To do the EKG they had to shave some of Jeff's chest hair which is when the kids started freaking out. Mind you it was late, they didn't have dinner, and all I had to entertain them was a book and teaching Nate how to spell Nathaniel. We told the kids that they were trying to give Daddy polka-dots on his chest and them seemed to calm them down.) The doc decided to give Jeff meds to try to get his heart back in rhythm, but then was able to get his heart to "reset" by having Jeff bear down for 10 seconds. The doc explained that he was having SVT which was very common and it just takes a couple of tricks to get your heart to come out of SVT. The doc wanted to monitor Jeff for a little bit more and then he thought we would go home. After about 20 minutes Jeff's EKG still wasn't back to normal so it was off to the ER for us.
I ended up calling Kathryn to see if she could meet us at the ER and take the kids. We didn't know how long it would be or really what would happen so I didn't really want to keep the kids with us. She, thankfully, was willing to pick up the kids and stop by the house to get them some clothes and stuff for bed. Nate was all excited to go to Miss Kathryn's until we had to leave Daddy. He then started to have a meltdown until he got to see that Daddy got to ride in an ambulance -- of course he wanted to know if he could ride in there too. :)
In the ER it was more waiting, more people commenting on the weird IV port they put in Jeff at MedEx and more "lack of information." They came and took Jeff back for a chest x-ray but never told us why or the result. It wasn't until about midnight that we saw the doc. The doc was great and ended up staying with us for almost an hour explaining things, talking about life and kids, and reassuring us that everything was probably OK. The plan was for Jeff to do a stress test in the morning just as a precaution, but no one really thought it was anything besides SVT. They transfered us up to the cardiac floor and got us settled for the night (the nurse offered to help Jeff take off his shoes and when he gave her a funny look, she looked embarrassed and mentioned that they aren't used to having young patients on their floor.) The nurses were great and did sneak in some food for Jeff. He wasn't supposed to eat after midnight, but since no one would let me him eat and his last meal was at noon the nurses took pity on my hungry husband and fed him. We got to sleep around 2:30 in the morning, and it was about 4 a.m. that the nurses rushed into the room and quickly set up a 12 point EKG. They didn't say much other than they saw something on the monitor and they wanted to get a better look.
The next morning the Cardiologist came to talk to us and mentioned that the stress test had been cancelled for that morning, but they would do one that afternoon. I asked why it was cancelled and he wasn't sure. I also asked about the x-ray (which he said was normal) and what happened at 4 a.m. that had the nurses rushing in. He wasn't sure but said he would check it out. The next thing we know Jeff heard the doc on the phone talking about a transfer. He came in to tell us that the night nurses had noticed a "blip"in Jeff's EKG that is classic Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome and that is why they came in to do the 12 point EKG. When the nurses consulted with the ER doc he cancelled the stress test knowing that they would need to do surgery as soon as possible. The Cardiologist came in and talked to us about the syndrome and the procedure that needed to be done (he mentioned that if Jeff would have passed out and didn't get help soon enough he probably would have died!) The place in VA to have the ablation surgery was at VCU medical center up in Richmond so Jeff earned another ambulance ride only this time it was a much longer ride.
At VCU it was a lot of waiting and eating a cardiac friendly diet. Of course they wanted to do the surgery on Thursday (so no food) until they realized they didn't have time to do it (hooray for food!), then they wanted to do the surgery Friday morning (so no food) but they already had procedures scheduled to he got bumped back to Friday afternoon (a lightly colored broth to eat and that was it!). Jeff's surgeon was phenomenal and was great to work with. God worked in so many ways during the three days that it was really awesome to see him work!
I had several people offer to come stay with me while Jeff was in surgery but I wasn't really sure how I would handle it. I'm kind of independent and kind of wanted to be alone however when they started to take him away it was all I could to do to hold it together. I had no idea how long the surgery would be, but thankfully three of Jeff's students showed up to talk to him (they thought the surgery had happened in the morning.) They were gracious enough to hang with me for almost the entire time Jeff was in surgery. Nothing like three goofy chemistry college students to keep your mind off the fact that your husband was undergoing heart surgery.
One benefit of having the surgery in Richmond was that Jeff's buddy Craig, who lives in Richmond, could come visit. I texted Craig as soon as I knew we were being transferred and he offered to come by the hospital. He stopped in on Thursday night and we hung out, played some train game, ate some good food, and just marveled at God's goodness thus far. Since I didn't have the camera (not something I thought to grab when I ran home to pack our over night bag -- which thankfully I packed for 2-3 days as that is how long we were gone.) but I did have the iPod touch so these are a couple of our pictures from our evening with Craig.
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