Thursday, December 20, 2007

Please pray for baby William






One of my co-workers, Harold, and his wife Kara have a 4 week old little boy named William. At William's 2 week check up, they discovered that his heartbeat was 290 (normal is 120-140). They rushed his via ambulance to Children's where they diagnosed him with Wolfe Parkinson White (WPW). A normal heart has one path for the brain to send a signal telling the heart to beat. People affected by WPW have two paths telling their hearts to beat, so their hearts beat twice as fast as they should. Doctors began medicating Will, and were able to silence the second signal to allow his heart to beat normally. After a few days of monitoring, Harold and Kara took him home where he did wonderful and gained almost 2 lbs. The original plan was for Will to get his medicine every 8 hours for at least a year, where they would then run another panel to see if he'd outgrown the signal - if not, this would repeat every year or so until he turned 12-13 and they would do a procedure to zap the second signal. He would have regular visits to adjust the medication as he grew. This syndrome is not terribly uncommon, but IS rather rare in such a young baby. (Affects roughly 3% of the population - 70% of the affected are males, and mostly seen in ages 11-50)
Monday, Will had an appointment to up his meds to accommodate the extra 2 lbs, he did really well with the new dose until early Tuesday morning when Kara took the stethoscope to him (they do this every couple hours to monitor him) and noticed that his heart rate was back up. Will was taken again by ambulance to Children's where they just assumed they didn't increase his dosage enough. Unfortunately Will has had 2 episodes in the last 24 hours and is on a much higher dose of his medicine than they ever intended him being on this soon. Assuming he starts responding to this high dosage, he's got another 3 days minimum at Children's…

William is their first baby , and as you can imagine Harold and Kara are worried and exhausted with all of this…
I spoke with Harold today to get specifics for prayer and he said that they really need Will to start responding to the meds and keep him stable on them until he's older. The doctors do not want to do this procedure on him any time soon! Pray for comfort for him and Kara - so that they might be able to rest some, as well as wisdom for the doctors.

Thankfully William is a pretty content, laid back baby. Whether his heart is beating normally or accelerated - his temperament stays the same and displays no signs of pain or discomfort.

Harold asked me to thank all of you in advance for keeping them in your prayers! I'll update with more when I have it.

Thank you!

2 comments:

J Yo said...

That is so hard! I will pray, Christina...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing the request. I will be praying.

Love Teresa