Update on Kevin's Heart Procedure

UPDATE Jan. 9, 2009

Well, let's just say the recovery has not gone as planned...Kevin's heart still looks great. The procedure was still a success...but he has struggled "bouncing back."

On Wednesday, Dec. 31 he had a very adverse reaction to his prescribed pain meds. Completely knocked out any reserve Kevin had to recover quickly.

He is still feeling some discomfort in the locations that they went in with the caths, has constant dizziness and lightheadedness. None of these are "common side effects" of the procedure. So we have been discouraged and full of questions.

I called the Dr. on Monday, Jan. 4 to talk to someone about his continued symptoms, they told us to come in for another EKG. It looked good. Heart rate was somewhat low...but not dangerously so. (What does that mean exactly??) So they decided to do an ECHO. Once they finished that, the tech told Kevin to go home. He asked, "So what do I do now?" To which she replied, "Well, you go home. If we find anything life-threatening we will call you in 5-7 days." (That quote will probably go down in Williams family history as one of the most RIDICULOUS things anyone has ever said to us.)
Read it again..."if we find anything LIFE-THREATENING we will call you in 5-7 DAYS!!!" geesh.

So in the spirit of playing nice, we went home and waited a couple days. Kevin's symptoms improving slightly but not significantly, I called (ahem...a couple times) and left messages stating that we wanted the results to his ECHO ... TODAY. I finally receive a call from the nurse and she says that the ECHO was fine but that the Dr. wanted to see us first thing in the morning. REALLY??? THE REAL DR.?!?!? THANK YOU, LORD!!

We saw the Dr. this morning. He is a WONDERFUL man. Very thorough and showed sincere interest in Kevin's situation.
The heart again: is strong. Procedure a "success."
The wounds: He is pleased with. The discomfort WILL go away.
The dizziness: A concern. May be related to his body metabolizing the anesthesia they administered to him for the procedure. He wants to do some blood tests and compare them to before the procedure. Will get the results back to us by this evening.

His nurse called us this afternoon to let us know that everything looked great in his blood work except for one test that they ran for his liver. One test showed slightly elevated levels in his liver. Does not necessarily show us anything, but he wants us to get more tests done in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, the Dr. has given us his email and told us to have him paged at the hospital if we continue to have trouble or are given the "run around." Which we thought was super thoughtful.

So, where does that leaves us??
Right where we are. Hopeful that his discomfort will go away. Thankful that the Dr. does not feel that we are missing some big underlying thing. Relieved that Kevin had a low resting heart rate prior to the procedure too. (He is so fit, the Dr. assumed he did bleachers for fun.) :) And a little concerned about the liver levels.

But, we know God is in control. We know nothing gets to us without His permission and that He is watching over us. We know that He is the Perfect Physician...He is the Healer. So we trust Him, because He is faithful and good. We continue to pray for complete restoration to his body, mind and spirit.