Beep Beep!
It seems like most nights we have been hearing that noise. Normally, the noise would be triggered because Matthew was wriggling too much and the pulse oximeter would lose the trace and alarm. Lately, however, Matthew has been alarming for another reason… his heart beat. The alarm limits are set to go off below 70 beats per minute and above 170 beats per minute. When Matthew cries or is very cranky, he can hit a heart rate of 175bpm but the doctors are not really concerned about this. What the would be concerned about is if the alarm was going off because his heart rate was too low. Well, that exactly what has been happening around here.
For a couple of nights now, Matthew’s heart rate keeps dipping to below 70bpm and setting off the alarm. Thankfully, after having an ‘episode’ of this, he is quiet for the rest of the night. On the few occasions Matthew has not woken from the sound of the alarm and Anthony and I have watched the monitor while he dips below 70bpm, it looks like it may still be a trace problem. The lights on the front of the machine are supposed to ‘bounce’ if it has a good reading. It is meant to light-up from the top of the graph to the bottom of the graph to show a good trace, but when it’s a bad trace it can sometimes not show a ‘bounce’ at all. When Anthony and I watch the monitor, it show that it keeps skipping a beat and that may be why it is showing a number lower than 70bpm. We have checked the machine by using a stethoscope to listen to Matthew’s heart and see if it does actually skip a beat too, but it does not appear to be. The hospital cannot do anything at this stage because Matthew is not presenting with anything factual yet. If it was a good trace and showed 70bpm, then we may have a problem, but not just yet. Now, it also may be that Matthew’s heart is just naturally slowing when he is asleep, like in a deep sleep. There really will be no way to know if it is all ok until we have a sleep study.
You may remember on the last blog we mentioned that Matthew has already got a sleep study booked in for early next month. That is very lucky because there can be a three month wait for an available night.
So next week at the sleep study, we will be able to see if it is just our equipment or if Matthew requires medical attention to his heart. At this point in time, we are not too worried as we (doctor’s included) know that the pulse oximeter machines can give false readings and should only be used as a guideline. Hopefully, when the results come back we will be able to tell you two bits of good news – one that his heart is ok, and two that we no longer need the night time supplemental oxygen.
August 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Sounds like you’ll have a few more sleepless nights, which sux… But at least he might come off the night O2!