You came upon me wave on wave...

You're the reason I'm still here.
Am I the one you were sent to save,
When you came upon me wave on wave.

Wave on wave.
Wave on wave.

--Pat Green, "Wave on wave"

So apparently there weren't any waves rocking the boat last night, and the waves that he had were only good ones. His EKG was perfect throughout the night and continues to look fantastic this morning. Such happy news to wake up to!

On his monitor, there are two things that we're looking at right now - the top wavy line (green) shows the electrical activity of his heart. It should look something like this:

But yesterday, it looked like this way too often and for way too long:

Last night, and all day today, he has kept a perfectly normal rhythm in spite of being moved onto a new mattress (more cushy since he can't move) and getting a new dressing on the large cannulas that are going into his neck. Yesterday, they were scared to do either for fear that it might cause his arrhythmia to get worse. They must be pretty confident that his rhythm is stable as they took out the defibrillator that had been parked at his beside since his arrest episode. Nice to get that scary piece of equipment out of the room.

The other wave we're watching is a little red line that displays changes in his arterial blood pressure. The ECMO machine constantly pumps blood in, so it is a flat line. Normally there is a distinct wave with each heart beat. With ECMO there are no pulses, so no pressure changes. But today, with every big wave on the EKG, there are visible blips on the red pressure line. That means his heart is doing something. Not only doing something, but doing what it is supposed to do when it is supposed to do it.

These are very small blips, but he now does have pulses that you can faintly feel and can see his chest move ever so slightly as his heart beats. It is still not nearly as strong as they need to be, so there is no talk of taking him off bypass this weekend. So pray that these blips start turning into waves.