Those of you who follow along on Facebook already know that we had a bit of excitement in our weekend. We headed out to Zach’s school carnival on Friday night and ended up with Hubby in the ER. Let’s just say it was quite the spectacle to watch a 260-pound man plow through a crowd of people while semi-unconscious. I’m still not exactly sure what happened as I was completely frozen until I saw him fall to the ground. He went about 10-15 feet, then fell. By the time I got to him, he was alert but couldn’t remember what had happened the few seconds before. People around us thought he was crazy, I was in shock, and the kids were about 100% freaked out.
My immediate reaction was to take him to the hospital, but he refused saying he felt okay. We let him sit for a while, but when he decided to go out and sit in the car I called my mom and told her I needed to take him to the ER. Fortunately, she wasn’t too far away and was able to come meet us. She agreed to drive him to the hospital so I could stay with the kids and let them enjoy the carnival a little bit. After a few games and some turns in the bounce houses, we went and met them at the hospital. The kids were very worried about Daddy, so they went in so they could see him for a few minutes before Grandma took them back to the house.
Once they got him back into a room and hooked him up to a bunch of monitors, we finally learned what was going on. The official diagnosis was SVT, or supraventricular tachycardia. Basically, he has an irregular heartbeat that occasionally speeds up really fast. This has been happening for a while, but it generally only lasts a few minutes and then goes back to normal. He has discussed it with his doctor before, but was simply told to drink lots of water and cut back on caffeine as dehydration can make this happen more frequently. He wasn’t overly concerned about it at the time, but after he blacked out and fell down it became a bit more of a concern.
While we were in the ER, his heartbeat continued to go up and down for several hours. He was given medication to help slow it down and once that kicked in it seemed to stabilize. His reward was being admitted for overnight observation. He met with the cardiologist Saturday morning, who gave him a prescription for heart medication (and a baby aspirin) and told him to follow up with a stress test within the next week or so. Shortly after that he was released and sent home.
We took it pretty easy the rest of the weekend, napping and taking care of some things around the house. We did venture out to go to church, but that’s about it. The kids were amazingly well behaved. I think the events Friday night really had them scared and they loved on Daddy a lot when he got home. To be honest it had me scared as well. I never imagined I would be taking my husband to the hospital for heart problems just days after his 35th birthday.
Sunday afternoon I felt the need to get outside for a little bit, so I bribed the kids with chocolate to let me take some photos of them. I’ve been trying to get to know a new lens and it was beautiful and sunny outside. They grumbled a bit, but I did end up with some great shots in the end. I decided to play around with some black and white processing on a few of them and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. (The rest are on Flickr.)
And, if you aren’t already exhausted after reading all of that, go check out my latest session on the photo blog! I had a wonderful time photographing Cagey’s beautiful kiddos!
