T
traig
Sunday was a big day for us -- we moved out of my in-laws' house and headed back home with a van full of stuff and the twins in tow. However, not long after dinner that night my wife asked me to take her pulse. She was concerned that it felt high.
Now, we're two months out from her AVR and MVR surgery and thanks to 25 mg of torprol a day her heart rate was generally 90-100, and we assume it will continue to come down. When I took her pulse that night she was at 120. Later that night it was higher, and at its worst at 3 am she was at 150. We tried to call her cardio practice but the menu system was fubar and we couldn't get the answering service. She took another 12.5 mg of toprol and was able to sleep a few hours. At 6 am she was at 120 bpm. We finally got her doc at 7 am and he told her to take 100 mg of toprol and if she wasn't down to 100 bpm by 8 am to go to the ER. We went to the ER.
Her doc met us there, did an EKG, and they determined that she didn't have an a-fib or other irregularity, so they gave her an injection of metatorpol (sp?) and she came down to around 100 so he was going to let her go with a new scrip for 100 mg of Toprol XL per day. However... while they were waiting an hour to see where her heart rate would end up, some blood they took showed an elevated white blood cell count (13 ... don't know what that means) and she suddenly had a fever of 101 (she didn't have a fever when she arrived). THey said she needed to be admitted for fear that she might have redeveloped endocarditis (the prosthetic variety) and they needed to hold her for a couple of days while the cultures they took developed.
So we were all freaked out and depressed. Infectious disease docs said the likelihood of endocarditis was low, maybe 5%, and that the wbc and fever could be a urinary or other infection, or the result of a virus. Strangely enough, she developed a sore throat and stuffed nose later in the day.
Today they did an echo (the tech said it looked good) and we're waiting for the first culture exam to come back. If it's negative today and tomorrow, she's 96% off the hook for endocarditis. They're going to watch the cultures for another week to see if anything develops late. We'll also know today if anything grew in the urine they took, but they've already almost ruled out UTI.
I guess they're simply being conservative. One doc told us that when mech. valve patients present with fever and elevated wbc they tend to worry about endocarditis and play it on the safe side since the consequences of misdiagnosed endocarditis are so severe ( as we well know ).
By the way, I woke up today with a sore throat, stuffy nose, and a very mild fever, 99.1. What I'm thinking is the move back irritated her heart and on top of that she was starting to be attacked by a rhino or other virus, or a sinus-type infection, so that complicated things. That also led to higher tachycardia. I'm hoping that's all this is and she'll be back home tomorrow.
What a year...
Now, we're two months out from her AVR and MVR surgery and thanks to 25 mg of torprol a day her heart rate was generally 90-100, and we assume it will continue to come down. When I took her pulse that night she was at 120. Later that night it was higher, and at its worst at 3 am she was at 150. We tried to call her cardio practice but the menu system was fubar and we couldn't get the answering service. She took another 12.5 mg of toprol and was able to sleep a few hours. At 6 am she was at 120 bpm. We finally got her doc at 7 am and he told her to take 100 mg of toprol and if she wasn't down to 100 bpm by 8 am to go to the ER. We went to the ER.
Her doc met us there, did an EKG, and they determined that she didn't have an a-fib or other irregularity, so they gave her an injection of metatorpol (sp?) and she came down to around 100 so he was going to let her go with a new scrip for 100 mg of Toprol XL per day. However... while they were waiting an hour to see where her heart rate would end up, some blood they took showed an elevated white blood cell count (13 ... don't know what that means) and she suddenly had a fever of 101 (she didn't have a fever when she arrived). THey said she needed to be admitted for fear that she might have redeveloped endocarditis (the prosthetic variety) and they needed to hold her for a couple of days while the cultures they took developed.
So we were all freaked out and depressed. Infectious disease docs said the likelihood of endocarditis was low, maybe 5%, and that the wbc and fever could be a urinary or other infection, or the result of a virus. Strangely enough, she developed a sore throat and stuffed nose later in the day.
Today they did an echo (the tech said it looked good) and we're waiting for the first culture exam to come back. If it's negative today and tomorrow, she's 96% off the hook for endocarditis. They're going to watch the cultures for another week to see if anything develops late. We'll also know today if anything grew in the urine they took, but they've already almost ruled out UTI.
I guess they're simply being conservative. One doc told us that when mech. valve patients present with fever and elevated wbc they tend to worry about endocarditis and play it on the safe side since the consequences of misdiagnosed endocarditis are so severe ( as we well know ).
By the way, I woke up today with a sore throat, stuffy nose, and a very mild fever, 99.1. What I'm thinking is the move back irritated her heart and on top of that she was starting to be attacked by a rhino or other virus, or a sinus-type infection, so that complicated things. That also led to higher tachycardia. I'm hoping that's all this is and she'll be back home tomorrow.
What a year...