Have read your updates.
Firstly, heart rate dropping is a good thing. They will be giving beta blockers to facilitate this as well as taking off fluid. Depending on how much fluid there is he may be on a filter machine as well as medication. If it helps any, I was overloaded by several litres at my worst and they were taking off 1.5L a day, and I wasn’t unconscious at that point. And my worst heart rate was 220 BPM but I had to be defibrillated at that point. He is nowhere near that.
Secondly, you haven’t heard from them overnight. This is good news. Because while he may not be any better at this point, he’s not worse either so he’s still hanging in there.
By all means give the ward a ring now to see how his night was, but agree with PP, it’s best to ring after about 10:30 after the ward rounds.
Visiting is obviously a bit more difficult because of COVID, so the same protocols won’t apply at this point. When I was in ICU my mum used to ring the ward at around 7, and was allowed up pretty much any time, but she used to come up at around 11/11:30 to allow for the ward rounds to happen (they generally throw people out then anyway for the privacy of other patients being discussed.
Fingers crossed that they start to see improvements and can take him off the ventilator soon. He may still be on oxygen at that point, but it’s always a step in the right direction.
And agreed with other posters, there are lots of interventions they can consider if he is at the more serious end of the scale, but the consultants will discuss these with you and if necessary will refer him to a more dedicated cardiology service.
I have a mitraclip which is a partial valve replacement, but the construction of my heart is such that I am not eligible for any other interventions such as ventricular assist devices etc, so my next port of call will be the transplant list. however as I said upthread, I am currently living more or less a normal life, I don’t notice my ICD is there except if it paces, which it does, very occasionally, but that’s why it’s there, and it just feels a bit like a skipped heartbeat when it does. And other than that I have been running around, doing my 10000 steps a day by wandering around the house while shielding, cutting the grass, doing the garden, everything I did before I got really sick, and I only really ever have to think about the future prospects when I go for my appointments at the transplant centre.
But it’s a long way to there, and there are a huge amount of interventions in between which mean he wil likely not have to consider such things.