Seeing a Cardiologist

For the past few months our biggest has been having episodes of chest pain and rapid heart rate.  We weren't exactly sure what was going on, but it all started shortly after we moved into our new home.  So, naturally, I chalked it up to the new environment.  Maybe he was scared of his new room, the new creaks in the house settling, or worried there was a ghost?  We do live all around battlefields after all.

Things really started picking up in late February and the frequency of his visits in the middle of the night became almost nightly.  Sometimes it'd happen before falling asleep, mostly during his sleep and it'd wake him up, and sometimes first thing in the mornings.  These episodes he was having didn't happen during the day, only at night.  When he'd come in at night, I'd put my Apple Watch on him to check his heart rate.  It was always between 90 and 110, resting.  We always thought that was high for a resting heart rate while he's been sleeping, so we started keeping track what he did during the day to see if anything was triggering an episode.

We noticed when he had caffeine, it happened more frequently.  So we cut of caffeine and it seemed to work for about two weeks.  Then the episodes came back.  We decided to make an appointment with his primary.  It wasn't an emergency, because the pain never lasted long.  It was just persistent.  They did an ECG, it came back normal.  They did blood work and he had low vitamin d.  So he took vitamin d pills for a month and retested.  It came back normal that time.

During that month, the episodes became daily so we went back in for a follow up and she referred him to a pediatric cadiologist.  We had to wait two months to get in, but once we did they ran two tests.  First up was another EKG and then a echo.  After the tests, we met with his doctor.  She was the nicest.  As soon as she looked at his ECG, we knew we had an answer.

He has Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome (a Mayo Clinic link)  It's a heart condition where his heart has a bypass pathway.  In a normal heart the pathway is from the upper chamber to the lower chamber of the heart.  His has a backwards C connecting to the normal pathway, but his electricity is taking the bypass, causing his episodes.  

The doctor sent us home with a heart monitor on him and another one to attach after one week.  So, he wore the monitor for two weeks.  He had a phone that monitored his rhythm and then at the end of the two weeks, they let us know the results.  It still showed the WPW syndrome so now we will be seeing a WPW specialist.  We were able to get in quickly with this appointment and next week we'll meet with him.  Xander can ask all the questions he has on how to manage this.  He's just hoping surgery won't be required.  Because he's so active, surgery may be the best option.  

 Have you heard of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome?