And the people all said, sit down...

...Sit down, you're rockin the boat.

--Don Henley, "Sit down you're rockin' the boat"

Derek here as guest author, and it's getting past my bed time so this will be pretty short. Overall, Jay is about the same this evening. As Jen mentioned this morning, he had a few hours of a significant arrhythmia last night (ventricular tachycardia or v-tach for those of you who want those details) which stopped rather suddenly this morning. It appeared to stop when they were moving him to attach stickers that are used for the defibrillator (the paddles that are used to shock the heart back into rhythm). Either the movement or the threat of the defibrillator were enough to break the v-tach. I was just standing nearby when it happened. For most of the day, his rhythm remained abnormal, but it was tolerable.

This afternoon he went into v-tach again when they were moving him over onto his side. He stayed that way in spite of mega doses of drugs that should stop this sort of thing. When they began to talk about defibrillating him, he suddenly converted again. Apparently he got he memo, and fixed it himself. Again, I just happened to be standing there. This time he pretty quickly returned to a normal rhythm that was periodically interrupted by abnormal beats. He's stayed that way since about 6:30pm so the plan for the night is to not rock the boat. They are going to micromanage all his drug levels and electrolytes to try and keep in his normal rhythm to stay.

We still don't know why he's having these episodes of arrhythmia. They've done quite a few blood tests, an echocardiogram, consulted with the heart failure team, and the electrophysiology team (the heart electricians), but no one has a good answer. Actually, no one really even has a bad answer. But, as long as he maintains his normal rhythm, we won't worry about the why.

Time to crawl into the little twin bed (yes, both me AND Jen), and try to get some sleep. Hopefully, there won't be any middle of the night drama tonight.