Some time around Sunday evening when Jonah was starting to run out of gas, his body and head felt warm to the touch. Of course we were thinking fever, even though his cath sites looked good and infection-free. When we took his temperature- no temperature. But he was also acting like he wasn't really feeling good, not just tired. That night we woke up to hear him moaning and groaning on the monitor. Nothing like we have heard him do when he's gone through a typical teething phase, which is about the only reason he would be waking up in the middle of the night over the recent months. I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to get up and check his temp again. No fever, but clearly uncomfortable and distressed. O2 Sats, normal. We brought him in to bed with us and he fell asleep pretty quick after getting some Ibuprofen. Come Monday, Jonah woke up feeling so-so and nothing seemed all that out of the ordinary. By nap time he was a disaster. He absolutely would not go down- after falling to sleep in my arms, the second he hit the crib he was up like a bolt of lightning. After several attempts, he finally got 2 hours in. When he woke up I gave him some Tylenol because he just seemed uncomfortable again; he wouldn't play, had a hard time finding a content position on my lap, and was over the top sensitive. About 30 minutes after Tylenol, he was like a totally different kid!! Bouncing off the walls, acting goofy, playing hard. We felt like we could maybe rule out a brewing infection by this point and by the way he acted before and after a little pain reliever, it really seemed like something else was bugging him. All the while, Jonah was getting back to his normal eating and potty patterns, so nothing there. We were making ourselves crazy trying to think of the possibilities, questioning whether we should bring him back in to have him examined again=Torture!
I called our Cardiologist that night trying my best to explain how Jonah had been acting and having a really hard time putting my finger on something definitive. He asked questions about facial swelling, oxygen saturations, signs/symptoms of infection. All I had for that was No, Nope, Nada. We hung up with the agreement to have him looked at by the Pediatrician in that maybe we were dealing with bad timing on teeth, an ear infection, or something totally random.
A top contender in the realm of possibilities Rob and I were stressing over was the adjustment that Jonah's body was experiencing to the change of blood flow after having 7 coils placed. After the Glenn, we knew that headaches were expected. Big change to blood flow with the Glenn. So we thought since they definitely tweaked things again going to the upper half of the body, a headache was certainly possible.
Finally, I talked with some fellow heart mom's who helped me think of some more pointed and specific questions to ask our cardiologist. I called him Wednesday morning on our way to work...and this is when the light bulb went on...
He said that the collateral vessels that they coiled off in the cath fed areas in and around the chest wall and ribs. "This can cause some pain and discomfort". Hellloooo?!?!?! That had to have been it! It shed A LOT of light on our particular situation. We love, love, love our cardiologist and entire medical team and respect the fact that they can't go around scaring parents over every single potential side effect under the sun. Because these kids are so different, there is literally no "textbook" to follow. But this kind of seemed like a "nice to know" sort of thing:)
A huge "thank you" to our fellow heart families out there!! The network of sharing our most personal joys, triumphs, pains, griefs, and "has your child ever experienced x-y-z" is PRICELESS!!!
A few pictures of our brave boy...
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