Big scare

Arlene here - Kris called well past midnight last night to say the hospital had called her and recommended that she come in. Bill's heartbeat had gotten slower and slower and finally stopped; he revived after CPR was administered. Abigail (who had been utterly exhausted and had fallen into a deep sleep for a short while) and I quickly dressed and sped off (in Bill's car which she has been driving) to the hospital. Was this "it"?

Bill was back in the ICU, intubated again. When we arrived he had just been given medication to enable him to sleep and was also being prepared for a lung x-ray.  The ICU doc, a cardiologist whose 'day job' specialty is inserting pacemakers, reviewed what had happened and shared with us his thoughts on the reasons behind this latest incident.  He said indicators such a potassium level had returned to normal very quickly and that Bill was now in stable condition.  His conclusion, after he showed us the new and prior lung x-rays and previous cardiograms and helpfully reasoned out loud, was that the scleroderma probably had damaged the heart's electrical conduction system.  He said a pacemaker would easily take care of this problem.

(What he said made sense but we have seen so many times that diagnosis and treatment recommendations seem to depend on the physician's specialty.  Last summer an oncologist kept testing him based on the theory that he had a blood cancer - multiple myeloma - and Bill lost valuable time for treatments that might have helped calm the slceroderma. The cardiologists last February thought he had a badly leaking aortic valve and -- cardiomyopathy? -- and would need open heart surgery. The pulmonary specialist's theory was that interstitial fibrosis in the lungs resulted in insufficient oxygen and subsequent problems such as too much CO2 and delirium.  As Kris said, "To a hammer, everything is a nail".)  My own question is whether a pacemaker would enable Bill to have a period of time to enjoy life or would it prolong suffering.

We left the hospital around 3 am, arrived home wide awake at about 4. I'm retired and can move slowly today but Kris has work and childcare responsibilities, and today Abigail is visiting Bill at the hospital as well as sorting out his belongings that remain at the house, arranging change of address with Social Security etc., and getting a handle on his business affairs.