A Medical Story Hits Close to Home
As a medical reporter for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, I had done all kinds of stories about kids with all sorts of heart conditions. But when a doctor is talking to you about your own child, it’s hard to take it all in and comprehend what it all means. Many arrhythmias required medication, surgery, a pacemaker or could lead to sudden death. As a reporter, I knew where to go Online to find more about arrhythmias but had to stop after I read the words, “sudden death,” because it made me feel like I was trying to drink from a fire hose.
That night, I slept on the floor in Bret’s room, wondering what I might have done when I was pregnant with him to cause his heart anomaly. I cried myself to sleep.
A Source Becomes My Son's Doctor
Bret was referred to Dr. John Clark, director of Akron Children’s Arrhythmia Center, a man, coincidentally, I had written several news stories about. He sent Bret home with an event monitor, also known as a Holter monitor, a small device he could wear around his neck or attach to a belt buckle for a couple days. It comes with a couple electrodes we had to stick to his chest with adhesive. The device would record all of Bret’s heartbeats and then allow us to send them to the doctor over the phone.
After Bret put on the monitor, it took less than 15 minutes for an episode to show up. And then another. And then another. The episodes showed up fast and lasted as long as 10 to 15 minutes. One of the episodes brought him close to passing out. His condition seemed to be getting worse, as though now he could finally stop trying to pretend it wasn’t happening and could surrender to it.
After seeing Bret’s results, Dr. Clark confirmed Bret had SVT, or supraventricular tachycardia, one type of arrhythmia. He explained SVT affects 1 out of 300 children. The heart knows when to beat because it is told to do so by electrical currents sent through it by a series of nerve pathways. People with SVT have an extra pathway that creates extra currents that curse through and make the heart beat twice as much. Bret was either born with it or it developed because of all the hormonal changes and rapid growth he was going through.
“Bret’s SVT is not life threatening but it’s a pain in the neck,” I remember Dr. Clark telling us. I made him repeat the part about it being non-life threatening a couple times. He explained the treatment options: medication (beta blockers), catheter ablation surgery or "wait and see," if his condition got worse.
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