Apostolic Friends Forum

I previously posted a couple months ago about my father being in the hospital not doing well. His heart at that time was only working at 17%. He had a recent appointment with his cardiologist and found that his heart function has improved and is working at 28%. He and my mom have been walking inside the mall a few times a week to stay mobile. Much improved from before, thank God.

Also, my friend who has been having terrible seizures every day has been going to the Mayo Clinic a few times within the past couple months for extensive tests on how to treat these seizures. They were thinking of implanting a device in his brain (VNS) to treat it. The trip before last, they ruled out the VNS and instead changed some medication.

Last week he had more tests and got some surprising news: It's not his brain, it's his heart. A Dr noticed his EKGs have registered tachycardia, specifically something called Long QT syndrome. One effect of Long QT is that it can also cause seizures, and even worse - sudden death. They prescribed him beta blockers and since then, he's not had a bad seizure. He's had some atypical absence seizures (where he just has a staring spell), but no grand mal seizures and not the number he was having previously.

Besides taking beta blockers, there are a couple surgical treatments which are mostly for high risk patients: Denervation surgery and implanting a defibrillator.

The good news of this is it's not his brain and there's hope that the beta blockers will help. Obviously, there's still danger with the tachycardia, but that is something hopefully a cardiologist can help him with.