Friday, June 19, 2009

Feeling a Little Bit Feisty

Lynnea seemed to be feeling a little bit better today -- she and I played several rounds of "where does the nasal cannula belong" throughout the day; she thinks that it belongs in her hand, or on the top of her head, and I think it belongs in her nose. Obviously, in the end, I always win out, but that doesn't seem to stop her from giving it her best shot. Overall, she had a pretty good day, until this evening when she decided to drop her saturation levels into the low 50's again around bedtime. There doesn't seem to be any obvious explanation for it (for instance, it's not happening just because she's upset or anything), which makes it a little scary. In the end, they just end up turning her oxygen up for awhile until her saturations come back up, and then the slowly turn the oxygen back down.

Blood work was done a couple of days ago to see if her white blood cell count was elevated (a sign of infection). Everything looked normal. So far, all of her viral cultures have come back negative. Without any concrete sign of infection, the plan for now is to try to see if Dr. St. Louis has any openings in his surgical schedule either late next week or early the following week for her. I believe the feeling among the cardiology team is that her symptoms are probably all cardiac related (probably heart failure, though no one is actually saying that yet because her last echocardiogram still looked OK) and operating on her sooner rather than later would be the best thing for her.

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