ER Visit

Last night, Chris and I checked Sam's oxygen saturation (which we do routinely with our home oxymeter we were issued). It was MUCH lower than ever, and below the 'cut off' percentage our cardiologist had given...it was between 65 and 70 percent, where it has been between 77 and 80 percent. With 75 percent being the 'cut off'/red flag percentage, we were obviously in trouble. But Sam looked fine...he wasn't any more blue, he was breathing fine, he was eating good, and he was alert. We decided to check it again in the morning.

I checked it at 10 this morning and sure enough, it was still at 65 percent. Although he was having NO other symptoms of heart failure, I called the cardiologist. He sent us to the ER.

Once there, the staff got all his vitals. Magically, his oxygen saturation was reading HIGH...80-90 percent!! That's higher than it has been since we left the NICU!!! They examined him and listened to our story about last night and this morning. They called our cardiologist and together decided that he was stable enough to be sent home for now. The cardiologist set up a follow up echocardiogram on Monday to check for changes in his heart defects that may have caused the low oxygen numbers on the home unit.

Being told to head to the ER was scary. It will be the first of likely many such scares as we head toward the heart repair surgeries. Sam is fine though, and we will see how the echocardiogram goes on Monday!

~Kathy