The Bradycardia Bunch

At the hospital

• The pain med collection seems to be working pretty well. Rachel was awake and relatively pain-free for a decent part of the day, and was able to respond to multiple questions/requests (her previous limit was one). She's still pretty zonked on Dilaudid and Fentanyl, but this is a step forward.
• Dialysis today for 4 hours.
  
• The new complication is bradycardia, a slowing of her heartrate that's been occurring 1-3 times per hour for the last day. She'll be ticking along at 120, often while asleep, and then her heartrate will slow to about 40 for 5-10 seconds before recovering. This also causes her to get agitated, and her systolic BP will go from 70 up to 180-200 as her heartrate recovers. The cardiologist (technically "electrophysiologist") called in to consult was not terribly alarmed; he thought it was a reflex in response to some stimulus, possibly gagging on her ventilator tube. Tonight's tracheostomy may well solve this, but in the meantime it made today more exciting than I would have liked.
• Her oncologist stopped by late in the day. Apparently the immediate spread from ovary to brain is pretty rare, so a pathologist at the University of Chicago is being consulted regarding the primary tumor, and a different chemo regimen for Round 2 may be called for.

At home

• The kids came home from the Boylan sleepover before noon, and hung around here in the afternoon.
• Conor had fun at Sean Cox's birthday party later, and now is whining about not being allowed to go to the Cousineaus with Emmet. Fiona's punching buttons on her phone non-stop and making occasional snarky pre-teen comments. It's comforting to have things as close to normal as possible at home.
  

Pat