Wednesday, November 11, 2015

EEG & Cardiologist news

Hailey has been complaining about being dizzy at school so I made an appointment with the local neurologist and also an appointment in Utah with Hailey's cardiologist to check things out. 

We started off with the neurologist suggesting an EEG for Hailey. We haven't had one in 3 years so I suppose we were due. When Hailey had her MRI in January they checked on her "Grey Matter" and didn't find anything alarming.

 Hailey was fine if I was with her during the EEG but if I stepped away she'd start to cry so they let us bring the iPad and all was well as we watched Frozen! 

The EEG didn't show anything that would cause concern and the Neurologist suggested seeing the cardiologist so off to Utah we went! 

Going to Utah is a monthly event for us. I think November and December will be the only months that we will NOT be going to Utah. It's so expensive for us to board the dogs, spend the gas money, and then pay for a hotel and eating out, but we do what we have to do. 

First they did a quick EKG which isn't very quick because it is so difficult for Hailey to stay perfectly still and breath normal. If we tell her to stay still she tends to hold her breath...LOL!

After the EKG they hooked up the pacemaker monitor and did some readings and the cardiologist was not pleased. 

When we first had Hailey's pacemaker placed it was because her left ventricle was sporadically not completing beats which caused her to be below normal at 59 beats per minute when 60 is as low as she should go. The pacemaker makes up when needed. She was having 2nd degree heart block. All of the sudden we are now being told that Hailey is "Pacing" all the time. Hailey is now in Complete AV (Atrioventricular) Heart Block Disease. Her left ventricle does not have a strong enough underling heart beat that the pacemaker is doing ALL the work. This is a very fast progression of this disease. Hailey's brain is having a hard time sending that message to her heart. 

This is breaking MY heart. I'm usually always in the realm of Hailey's Brain, but now we need to focus on Hailey's Heart. The cardiologist told us that when we see Hailey ataxic and lethargic we need to get Hailey to a hospital so they can check on her heart and make sure the pacemaker is doing what it needs to.  It has certain settings in place. Usually Hailey being tired or lethargic is Leukodystrophy and we just let her be because that's what happens, now we have to take a few extra steps to make sure Hailey is alright. We hate having to go to hospitals but I did hear that if you are there for a heart issue you get to cut the line..?

The cardiologist doesn't want us to limit activities with Hailey because this is about Hailey's quality of life. I think I went into over drive hearing this and planned SO many activities for Hailey. I don't want to think about the bad stuff too much. I just want to enjoy Hailey and have her do fun things so she has memories of that instead of memories of doctors and hospitals. 

Looking at Hailey she looks perfect and she is perfect in our eyes but this stuff is pretty scary and I need to remind myself that we knew this might of been something that was going to happen. The cardiologist reminded me of this but then added, "We just didn't think this would have happened SO fast!"

So that's our news as of right now. The dizzy spells might be a brain thing and it might be a heart thing, but it could also be an inner ear thing or just a random thing. We never seem to get the answers to our original question and we end up with more questions in the end. We were going to see the cardiologist every year after this appointment, but now we will continue to see her every 6 months with over the phone pacemaker transmissions every 3 months instead of every 6.

For now we will keep on doing fun things for our girl and make some extra exciting memories. Some that we've already done that you can check out on our Facebook page! 



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