Blake update

We have had many friends and family calling wanting an update on Blake. For those of you that don't know, Blake was admitted to the ICU on Tuesday because his heart was beating about 240 beats per minute and a normal 2 month old should have a heart rate of 120-140. They did an EKG, chest Xray and an Echo of his heart and found that he is in what's called suprventricular tachycardia. The form of this that Blake has is pretty rare and it is called Persistent Junctional Reciprocating Tachycardia...I know it's confusing, but basically he has an extra electrical impulse in his heart that is stimulating his heart to contract continuously without relaxing or giving it time to fill up with enough blood. His heart is only putting out 30% of the blood volume that it should be. As you can imagine, he is very tired, it's like running a marathon day after day without giving your heart a rest. They have tried several times to do a cardioversion, which basically means that they use medications to stop his heart and then re-start it with the hope that when it restarts, it will be in a normal rhythm. So far, each time they have converted him, it only lasts a few seconds and then he is right back in SVT. They have him on several medications to slow his heart rate down and some that make his heart contract stronger to help put out more blood. His heart rate has been in the 180's and 190's for that past 2 days, which is an improvement, but still too high. If they are not able to convert his heart into a normal rhythm, they will have to do an ablation, which means that they basically freeze or burn the extra electrical impulse in his heart so that it does not stimulate the extra heart beats. He has to weight about 30 pounds to do the procedure, so they won't be able to do it until he is about 3 years old. They will treat him with medications until then to keep his heart rate down so that it does not cause permanent damage to his heart. The doctors seem very confident that they will be able to treat this either through medications or through the ablation. They keep telling us that the medications take a long time to work and to be patient. We know that he will be in the ICU until at least Tuesday. Once they are able to stabilize his heart rate, we will be able to take him home. We are trying to be patient and we know that he is in good hands. Thank you everyone for your phone calls, your thoughts and your prayers. We love you and will keep you updated.