Our Little Hummingbird No More!

Wow, how technology has changed. Heart surgery is now an outpatient procedure that meant that Bowen was home that evening and could go back to school, with some restrictions, by the end of the week.

For those that have not been following the saga, Bowen started having weird issues with his heart. His heart would race and go extremely fast, when he had done nothing to cause an elevated pulse rate. We would rush to the doctor, only to have it stop before we got in. So, we were referred to a cardiologist, who immediately identified the problem as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, or Accessory Pathway Tachycardia. We suffered a month with electrodes and a monitor strapped to Bowen, only to find that his heart was beating at a phenomenal 260 bpm. So, I began calling him "My Little Hummingbird." The episodes, deemed merely a nuisance unless they became more frequent, indeed became more frequent. So on December 1, 2008, Bowen went in to Primary Children's Medical Center and had a catheter ablation.

Despite his nerves, he very happily posed for the camera before surgery. He was actually very pleased that he got to choose the flavor or his anesthesia (or "amnesia" as he called it). He chose Green Apple and Watermelon mixed, which he coined "Waterapple." Apparently Bowen has a rogue vein that crosses in front of the artery that they were trying to enter, so after several attempts and some very painful bruising, they entered through his neck instead. He is on the swift road to recovery and hopefully will be "Our Little Hummingbird" no longer.