KatieKatherine

So, this one is, obviously, not about hairdressing. It's about my darling daughter. KatieKatherine was born prematurely, on March 4th, 1997. My water broke at work, due to Placenta Previa...placenta attaching too low in the cervix--when she started hanging out up near my ribs, she managed to tear the placenta, hence, my water breaking at work. The doctors at BMH were trying to figure out if I needed to be on bed rest when her heart rate spiked to over 300 beats a minute...very high for a baby, whose heart rate should be around 120-150 beats a minute. So, the decision was made to have her by cesarean. She was shipped to Dartmouth roughly 5 hours after she was born, because they couldn't stabilize her in Brattleboro. She stayed there nearly a month, where it took her a couple of weeks to have what's called a spontaneous episode. KatieKatherine was diagnosed with SVT...supra ventricular taccardia or super fast heart beat. While her heart beat circulates throughout the heart, at a random time, it will speed up. Her heart races and it doesn't slow down on it's own. When kids are very small, this is tough to deal with because they can't always tell you what's going on. However, as a 13 year old (almost) she definitely can. Katiekatherine was in gym class yesterday, doing lots of running. She told the gym teacher she wasn't feeling right, the teacher had her sit down, and checked her pulse..her heart was beating 240 beats a minute. Guess what, folks?? A spontaneous episode. The first one since she was 2 weeks old. She was very limp and ookie last night...felt unbelievably tired and was also very scared. I checked her heart rate and it was just over 100 beats a minute. A normal heart rate for her is now in the adult range (it slows down as children age), any where from 60 to 100 beats a minute. Currently, she's sitting pretty at 88 beats a minute, after the third time I've checked her this morning. That brings back when I had to check her rate every hour or so when she was a newborn!! Thank goodness I kept the stethescope I bought way back then!! Now, we're waiting for Dartmouth to call back to see if we need to get in earlier than May 7th. At that time, she'll get a complete work up, including an EKG. The last time we were there, she was 5, so she doesn't remember any of this stuff. Should be interesting. I will admit, to you, not so much to her, that this scared me quite a bit. I went with the opinion that since she's never had an episode before, that she's okay, that she outgrew it. Apparently not.