Unexpected.

So, I got a call from Dr. I today. 

It's never a good feeling when you see the name of your child's cardiologist pop up on caller ID at 10:00 in the morning, especially after realizing you had just missed a call from him four minutes prior.

Apparently, Ethan's heart was in some sort of funky rhythm on Monday while we were performing the monthly call-in for his pacemaker.  It appears to be an atrial arrhythmia and we've seen it pop up before.  Dr. I is concerned that Ethan's heart could be entering into this arrhythmia more frequently than we thought, so he wants to see him sooner (like, tomorrow) rather than later (at his scheduled check-up in two weeks).

He's fitting us in first thing in the morning and Ethan will have a full work-up.  A pacemaker interrogation will let us know if/when any arrhythmias have occurred over the past three months, and we'll know exactly how long Monday's episode lasted.  Ethan will also have an echo to make sure his heart function is not being compromised by any of this.

Based on the general pacemaker status (battery life, condition of the leads, etc.), we could walk away from tomorrow's appointment with a very real idea of when Ethan's next surgery will be.

Take a deep breath with me and say a few prayers for us, please.