Been having site problems again and so posts weren’t going out in time. Sorry about that.
I wanted to share how the installation of Gavin’s Holter Monitor went at Akron Children’s Hospital today. Let me start out by asking something.
Have I said how much I love Akron Children’s Hospital? If not, I love Akron Children’s Hospital. 
As you are no doubt already aware of, Gavin was at the Heart Center, located inside the William H. Considine Professional Building today. He’s was having a Holter Monitor installed. I joke about installed but I guess that what happened, in a sense.
The process was quick and painless.
Basically, when we were called back, we were taken to a small room where Gavin was told to sit on the exam table and remove his shirt.
While Gavin engaged in awkward conversation, the tech placed 5 electrodes. Two were on his upper chest, on either side of his sternum and the other three were located on his abdomen.
Each electrode has a wire attached and that wire is plugged into the tiny monitoring/recording device.
The device itself is pretty small, perhaps roughly the size of a deck of cards and is inside a carrying case that is carried by Gavin, over his shoulder.
The purpose of all of this is to get an idea of what hos heart rate and rhythm is like over a 24 hour period of time.
We were given a paper to document what his activities were and what times they took place. This allows them to correlate the rate and rhythm to the activities he was partaking in.
While we know that no one can actually fix the problem because it’s not actually his heart that’s the problem, we can access the level of wear and tear his cardiovascular system is experiencing. We can get an idea of what level of activity is safest for him and his heart.
It’s important to remember that the real issue here is his autonomic dysfunction.
The fact that his heart rate is so elevated is secondary to the fact that his brain isn’t functioning properly.
We might be able to tweak his cardiac meds or even start something new but to my admittedly limited knowledge, that’s probably about it.
After everything is done recording, sometime Tuesday morning, we will head back up to Akron Children’s Hospital to drop the device off. Typically, the patient would return the device in a prepaid FedEx package but since Gavin has his cardiology appointment on Friday, we want to make sure that they have a chance to download and interpret the results prior to our appointment.
That’s about it. The entire process only took a few minutes. Quick and painless is just how I like these things to go.
Gavin is tolerating things pretty well. He says the stickers are a bit itchy but that’s it…..
I look forward to getting so useful information from this process.
I should also thank Akron Children’s Hospital for once again taking such good care of our precious cargo.
Thank you……
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