Hearts on my mind

We took Dutch to the ER on Sunday (before last), his heart was racing, he was feeling weak. We spent the subsequent 6 hours staring at his monitors. Fortunately, things started improving almost as soon as we got there (and they pumped him full of magnesium sulfate, sadly he didn't get enough to become a "funny limp noodle" as my sister-in-law says).  At first, I really didn't think that Dutch was having a real "emergency".  When he passed out two years ago, I dragged him to the ER and after an obnoxious amount of testing they said he was "dehydrated" and his sodium was low.  That was when he started taking salt pills, and we hadn't had another incident.  Until now, that is.  I thought we'd go there and they would say, "dude, you just need to lay down and have a glass of water".

Today I went to a prenatal and I got to hear Dos's heartbeat and it was the same bpm as Dutch's -- 150-- a great heart rate for a foetus, but a perfectly awful heart rate for an adult man.

We stared at Dutch's heart lines for 6 hours.

At the beginning they looked like this.  They didn't even look like a heart thingy at all.  The doctor gave him some serious "chemical difibrillator"  (ha ha look at my spelling!).  It took a while, and then it looked like this...

This was after the chemical difibrillator.  The rate jumped from 150, to 110, 125, all over the place.  But it did start looking like a heart thingy.  I am sure there is a name for that typical heart line.  Dutch's never looked like it. Notice it is not regular at all.

After hours of staring at the monitor, it started to look like this.  Less noisy, fewer bad words.  But then it would revert.  The doctor came in and out, and offered suggestions and hypothesis. Maybe we started hallucinating.  Long story short, Dutch is OK, but we got to meet the funniest cardiologist.  I had never met a cardiologist before.  He addressed all the important things to me.  Next week "we'll" be getting together to discuss Dutch's medications.  Bwaah Ha Ha Ha!