Giving Thanks in November

We have reason to rejoice and give thanks this morning!

Yesterday, Jake’s defibrillator fired at work. He was nearing the end of his shift at Sam's Club, scurrying around trying to get an aisle moved and a new one set up before he left. He was moving boxes and climbing up and down the steel. He felt tired, but his break was coming up, so he was pushing hard to get as much done as he could. He began to feel over heated, so he took off one of his shirts to cool down and kept working. All of a sudden, he felt as though he would black out and then before he could even get oriented from that, his defibrillator fired.

He was able to get to the manager’s office and sit down. Long story short; he called us and Tom went to pick him up from work while I began making phone calls to Children’s and Jake’s local cardiologist. We took him to the ER (where his whole pacemaker journey started back in August) and they ran an EKG. By this time, his color had returned and his heart rate returned to normal. He still felt shaken, but OK.

The ER doc called in a rep from Medtronic, the manufacturer of his pacemaker/defib, and he downloaded the information about what happened before, during and after the event. It showed that Jake had suffered a bout of sustained ventricular tachycardia with his heart rate soaring to 300 bpm. The first thing the pacemaker tried to do was ‘get out in front’ of the arrhythmia by pacing faster than his heart was going and take over to pace it back down. It wasn’t able to do that, so it fired. This brought his rhythm back to ‘normal.’ The whole episode took 8 or 9 seconds.

While this was a very scary event, it is a VERY good thing. Without the defib, he would have died. Also, this proves that the pacer is doing it’s job. Sometimes they malfunction and deliver a treatment unnecessarily. This was definitely necessary and it did just what it was meant to do!

Obviously, there will be follow-up and we may learn more. He just had a nuclear stress test on Monday that apparently went well, so that may eventually give us more information, too.

So, last night was stressful but in the larger scheme of things, we are rejoicing because it saved his life! God has graciously intervened and preserved his life yet again. We have much for which to be thankful!

Rejoice with us and give thanks to God!  His loving-kindness endures forever.