Tonight on 24...

OK it's not that bad, but sometimes it feels like there are similarities. And the last 24 hours have certainly been eventful.

When I posted last night, they were just about to start the IV infusion for Petrina. That didn't go particularly well. My wife is a wonderful woman, and is able to tolerate a lot of things - needles, vomiting, gastro, fatigue; Petrina wouldn't bat an eyelid for any or all of those things. But she draws the line at crushing chest pains. So when that happened 3 minutes after the IV started, she promptly had it stopped. That wasn't an easy decision, but we already knew that this was not the last treatment option, so I think it was the right one.

In the end, she slept quite well in CCU last night. It seems that the beds there are more comfortable than in the Mothers. And in the morning there was a very positive surprise: Petrina had been feeling a lot more activity, and when the specialist came over to do a quick ultrasound, he saw that baby was in sinus rhythm (that's good) with a heart rate around 130 bpm (that's also good). Still some bigeminiy and trigeminiy arrhythmias, but a lot better than it had been. They watched that for about 10 minutes. Very encouraging.

Since the IV was stopped, they moved Petrina back to the Mothers this afternoon. She's back on the previous treatment plan and dose levels, although it will take a day or so to bring levels back up with the disruption of the last 24 hours.

It's sort of a mixed blessing that a doppler check this afternoon picked up SVTs and high rates again. It's a downer because it's not steady sinus rhythm, but it's good in that we haven't spent the whole weekend thinking "the heart's working properly again". My sister said that on the cardiac ward where she works, it's not unusual for patients to flip between SVT and sinus rhythms during treatment. I think... no, I know God knew that we needed a gentle reminder that it's still a long road, and to keep our hope and our focus in Him.

Meanwhile SP isn't saying so, but he's deeply missing his mum. Playing at a friend's house (a very long-suffering friend today) he was quite upset for a couple of hours, until it was clear that daddy was nearly there to pick him up. I took him to the GP this afternoon just to make sure the last few days wasn't anything serious, and she said it's probably just a virus. I'm pretty sure that some of the night-time wakings are to check that daddy's still around to look after him.