What Just Happened?

Yesterday afternoon as Christine was trying to get the family ready to head over to Lou's baseball game she found Tim limp and unresponsive, face down in the family room.  Being the amazing mom that she is, she immediately went into action sending Lou to go get his grandma from down the block, grabbed the AED, called 911 and then administered life saving CPR while waiting for the paramedics to get to the house.

After getting stabilized at home Tim was brought to Good Samaritan hospital in Downers Grove for a closer look and additional stabilization.   They ran some tests, including a CT scan, to rule out any other immediate dangers in an effort to get Tim ready for transport to Children's Memorial.  Everything came back clean enough that transport to Children's was arranged, although Tim started to run a fever and the transport team decided that it would be best to have him intubated for the journey.  While this was happening dad went home to pack up some things and get prepared to stay at the hospital with Tim for the next several days and then meet Tim and mom at the hospital.

After arriving at Children's the next several hours were spent trying to further stabilize Tim.  He had a central and arterial line put in and was started on about a half dozen medications to help his heart and sedate him.  He had several chest x-rays and the electrophysiologist, Dr. Ward, made adjustments to his pacemaker settings to work his heart out of an abnormal rhythm.  Tim also was visited by the neurology team to make sure there was no brain damage or other neurological issues at play, thankfully they found none.  As of this morning he is able to follow simple commands, move his arms and legs and has been trying to talk even though he is on the ventilator.

Tim still is very sedated and will be intubated for at least the next day.  He has some fluid in his lungs, possibly from aspirating vomit when he had his event.  The doctors are now pretty sure they can rule out a seizure as the reason behind what happened, instead it looks like he's been having rhythm issues for about the last week based on what they've gotten from Tim's pacemaker.  There is still a bit of detective work to be done to try and fully understand what brought it on though.

The plan for today, at least so far, is that they are going to continue to try and work on Tim's pacemaker settings to get his rhythm where it needs to be since he's been going into and out of atrial flutter pretty regularly.  They are also going to be adjusting medications, adding on some anti-arrhythmic meds to help the cause as well.  The big picture, at least as it stands now, is that it looks like Tim will likely be in the hospital for a while and they will likely be changing his listing on the transplant list from 1B to 1A in an effort to get him a new heart sooner.  There are still many steps to take between now and then, but for now it doesn't look like Tim will see the outside of a hospital for a while.