What a Sunday!

This morning started out like any other Sunday. We were all getting ready for Church when Josh mentioned that his heart felt funny. After taking an aspirin, a shower and getting dressed Josh said that he didn't think he could make it to church and that he felt light headed and his heart was beating weird. After a quick call to our health insurances nurse line we were told to go to the ER.

Luckily Tacoma General is 2 blocks away from us. After an EKG we were told that Josh's heart was in "AFib" (atrial fibrillation) which means irregular heart beat. AFib is when the top of the heart begins to pump irregularly and in Josh's case was beating too fast every couple of beats and not really helping the heart to beat correctly. Josh described it as a fish flopping around on his chest. If left untreated AFib can lead to strokes, heart failure, etc.

If that wasn't enough the initial plan right away was to perform Electric Cardioversion which means they shock him with pads to get his heartbeat back to normal. But after a consultation with the ER doctor and taking into consideration his recently installed Medtronic Back unit and the possibilities of a blood clot he was given an ultrasound of his heart. After hours of sitting around and waiting for the cardiologist to read the results and approval from the manufacturers of the back unit Josh was cleared to receive the shock treatment.

The craziest part about it for me was that I got to see him get shocked. He was put under brief sedation (which required a lot of meds) Josh's heart was shocked back to a normal beat. It is everything you would imagine it to be. The doctor yelled "clear" and Josh's entire body jolted. Within 3 seconds he was awake and was no longer in AFib.

By 6:30pm tonight Josh is back home and resting well. We realize that things could have been a lot worse today and we are grateful that it wasn't. The biggest concern was the possibility of a blood clot. If there was one Josh could have had a stroke, but the cardiologist seemed confident that he did not have one. The doctors are not sure why Josh's heart would go into AFib as it is very rare for someone so young to develop that. Possibly causes are stress or blood clots or toxins.
We go back in about 2 weeks to see the cardiologist and Josh for the meantime is on a daily regiment of aspirin and betablockers.

We want to thank all of our friends and family who prayed for us today and kept Josh and our family in their thoughts. Things could have easily gone bad today but not ignoring the symptoms and getting quick medical treatment really did wonders.
Thank you all again.