Good News, Bad News

The good news is that Lynnea' breathing tube was successfully removed this evening, and so far she seems to be doing OK without it. The bad news is that there are still some concerns with the way blood is flowing across her reconstructed aortic arch -- the fear is that there is still some narrowing, which could potentially be fixed by pushing a balloon through. In order to get a better idea of what is going on, the doctors would like to do another heart catherization to get a better look at things, and ideally, they could fix the problem at the same time. Earlier today, the plan was that they would go ahead with the catherization tomorrow afternoon. Unfortunately, last night Lynnea was running a fever, so cultures were run on all of her bodily fluids to see if she has any infections. The rapid test came back positive for a blood infection. This means that she can't have a catherization done right now (the doctors don't feel that the catherization is an urgent matter, as long as we get it done before we are discharged from the hospital). Right now the plan is that she will be on antibiotics for the next 10-14 days, and we'll see how things go from there. (Yes, this means that we're going to be at the hospital at for at least another 10-14 days, unless we're willing to take Lynnea home with an IV still in place, which I'm not OK with.)