Post Ablation Day 1

I finally got to see Sam around 11:30pm with his mom. He was still very groggy and in a lot of pain. He said this ablation was more painful than the one in May. He had a great night nurse - Ramone who was in his room constantly to check his blood levels at this groin site. Once it dropped below 200 he was going to remove the tubes and apply a 10lb sandbag to clot the site.  I left the hospital in the early morning hours and came home to get some rest and his mom stayed with him. At around 6am he was able to get up and walk around and try and put some pressure on his groin. However, soon after walking around in his room he started to bleed and was sent back to bed for another 4+ hours.

[The sandbag that had to lay on Sam's groin to clot the blood at the site]

Dr. Wong came in to see Sam around 1:30p today and wanted to explain to him everything that he was able to do during yesterday's procedure. He drew on Sam's patient board and explained how he went in and worked on his heart. Looking at the photo below - the atrium with the arrows is the right side of his heart. This is the side that they fixed back in May and is still blocked and after testing isn't showing any signs of active signals. The side with the dots is his left side and that is the one where Dr. Wong spent 6 hours ablating. The total number of ablations done in Sam's heart was between 300-400!

[Dr. Wong's drawing to Sam as he explained to him what he did inside of his heart]

Dr. Wong was able to use a new devise that is able to chart while he is catheterizing. It shows him how effective the ablation is and measures the tissue to see if it was destroyed enough to build a block in his heart. This is something that wasn't available back in May for his procedure. The Dr was confident he ablated all of the triggers on the left side of his heart. On the right side everything was gone for good BUT he did see some Atrial Flutter after inducing his heart back into an arrhythmia and it came from the right side. However, it was mysterious and he couldn't find the source... with the left side being fully ablated there are no triggers to feed off of the flutter should it come back. 

Next Steps:

We have a follow-up appointment with Dr. Wong in January. At that time he will be taken off of all of his arrhythmia medications and placed on a 30 day heart monitor. If there are no issues seen on the heart monitor he will discontinue the medications for good. If for some reason there are still issues within his heart we will re-evaluate at that time. 

We agreed with the Dr today that the next time we are leaving Royal Oak Beaumont it will be with our baby in March/April 2013. 

For now Sam is shuffling around for the next week...