3/9/06 pre-visit, post-phone call

Amazing what 5 minutes on the phone can do for ya.
I talked to Dr. Watts around 9am, and the rational side of me was right.

There is only one doctor right now who does the heart cath procedure - Dr. Stern. His schedule is obviously full, and he has to schedule in advance because he's so busy. When Nova hit his plateau due to infection, they were concerned that he'd need a cath and were discussing when Dr. Stern could do it.

However, according to Dr. Watts, Nova is looking better over the last 2 days and they're going to begin weaning the sedatives off again - which actually started yesterday afternoon. Dr. Watts said that there was nothing to be concerned about, that there were no new developments as far as Nova's heart, and that it was mainly a "what-if" conversation about scheduling, which seems to have been negated by the re-start in Nova's forward progress.

I feel better just having touched base with him. I wish I could be there for rounds every morning. I want to know EVERYTHING that's going on, everything that's being done, everything that they're considering doing, and most of all, I want to know the "why's" of all of it. I figured that going through this process would give me an understanding of so many things, as far as biology of the heart and the effects of the different drugs and such. I feel like I know LESS now, lol. I'm overloaded with information and I can't keep track of it all sometimes.

I've been researching the systemic effects of narcotics, at least the ones Nova's on. I didn't realize that narcotics depress respiration. Heh. That makes sense and explains things a little doesn't it? They also cause hypotension (lowered blood pressures) which also makes sense.

My next bit of research is on withdrawal symptoms and their duration in infants.
Ativan, Fentanyl, Versed (or midazolam) and Morphine are the drugs he's taking, or has been taking. They've got him off the fentanyl, but he's on the ativan drip, and morphine PRN (as needed) Ativan and Fentanyl have a half-life of approx. 16 hours, Morphine's half-life is as little as 2 hours. Versed is about 5 -7 hours. Those are pretty good numbers, some drugs have half-lives that are DAYS long.

You ever notice that when you see ads on TV for medications, they list side effects? may cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and dizziness. In rare cases, death may occur... Well, when they put your kid on all of these meds they don't tell you the side effects before hand. In reading up on all of these drugs, the side effects are really frightening!