A Turn For The Worse

Although Devin looked well we began to see signs of his heart failure worsening. They were going up on several of his medications, he was getting tired easy and was uncomfortable a lot of the time. It all came to a head when Devin broke a fever one early morning in the beggining of November. We took him to his pediatrician first and they sent us back to Doernbecher Children's Hospital for a chest x-ray. We came home after the x-ray and waited to hear from the doctor's again.During this time Devin became completely unconsolable, he was screaming at the top of his little lungs and there was nothing we could do but wait. It took about a couple hours for them to get back to us. The doctor told us they thought he might have pneumonia and that he needed to go to the hospital. She told us she was going to speak to Devin's cardiologist at DCH and call us back. When she called back she said that an ambulance was on the way to pick him up. This is when we panicked. we ended up just driving to the hospital because it was quicker to drive. When we got there they checked him out initially by people who knew nothing about Devin and we felt like they were wondering why we were there. After about an hour Dr. Law the transplant specialist at OHSU came to look and was concerned and immediately made the decision to admit him. Once he was admitted they began looking for reasons why he was spiking fevers along with other symptoms. They began ruling out things and then did another ECHO. This showed that his arteries were swelling as well as his heart and it also showed that he had formed a clot in his heart which is a very bad sign of things to come. They immediately started him on blood thinners.