Recovery

Well we are here in recovery after (crossing our fingers) the first successful ablation. Sarah checked into the hospital yesterday at 10:45. They took her almost immediately to the cath lab. She was smiling and kept saying, "I am so excited." The nurses and others looked at her funny because they had never had a patient be excited about an ablation. The doctors started the procedure sometime between 11:00 and 11:30. We heard word at a little after 7:00 pm that they were done. The doctors were very persistent. One of the doctors said this morning that they wanted to keep going until they got her arrhythmeas because he knew that he wouldn't be able to come to work and see Sarah everyday with an arrhymea still persistent.

Sarah was taken up to her room on the Cardiac floor at about 8:00 pm last night. We got to get in and see her around 8:30. The nurses that she works with all wanted to come see her and check up on her. It has been really nice to have so many caring friends looking after her.

Sarah was pretty sleepy and doped out until about midnight. They gave her a lot of medicine to make her sleep because her procedure lasted 8 hours. It took her a long time before she was really awake. She kept saying, "I am trying so hard to open my eyes," and "I just can't open my eyes right now." Everyone said, that it was ok and she just had to rest.

Sarah had to lay flat on her back and could not bend her legs until 7 am this morning. It was a miserable night for her as she was very discomfortable from being on her back for such a long time. The reason that she could not bend her legs is because they did not want the sites on her leg where they went into her veins to start bleeding again. At 7:30 this morning she was able to get up and get out of bed. Her heart was a little irritated during this time when she was up and walking around but this is kind of to be expected because of all the work that was done yesterday.

Going forward things look very optimistic for the following reasons. In every other ablation that Sarah has had the doctors have gotten close to getting all the areas of her heart that have been causing arrhythmias gone but not completely. Because they could not get all of the areas completely irradicated the doctor would then cardiovert her and put her on anti-arrhythmia medicine. This time, the doctors completely eliminated the arrhythmias through ablation. Once the arrhythmias were gone then they tried to reinduce the arrhythmias through addrenilen and other other drugs. When they tried with Sarah her heart did not go back out of rhythm, and her heart rate only reached about 120-140, which is very normal. This is the first time, coming out of an ablation that she has not been cardioverted. The second thing is that she usually comes out of the ablation on anti-arrhythmia drugs. This time, she is not on any anti-arrhythmia drugs and her heart has been in normal sinus rhythm, except for the brief time that she was up and walking around this morning.

We should be out of the hospital later this afternoon or early this evening. Sarah has two weeks off of work and will be taking it easy. We appreciate all the kind words and prayers in our behalf. We hope that we are finally done with this journey.