Home Until Next Tuesday (Hopefully)

Today we played the all too common "to discharge, or not to discharge" game all day, and this evening they finally decided to send us home. Lynnea's triponin levels that they checked last night still looked fine, and she seems to be in stable condition, so the cardiology team felt that it was fine for us to go home for now. She has another heart catherization scheduled for next Tuesday...I don't have an exact time, but she is scheduled as the second case of the day (so probably late morning). The doctors feel that the most likely cause of her extra high hemoglobin levels is her narrow pulmonary vein. The narrowing of her pulmonary vein causes her blood-oxygen saturation levels to dip even lower than her usual, which makes her body think that it should try to compensate by producing more red blood cells, which contain hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the part of the blood that carries the oxygen, so more hemoglobin should mean higher sat's. Unfortunately, in Lynnea's case, this doesn't really bring her sat's up, and it can cause extra problems because more red blood cells means thicker blood, which is more likely to clot off her B-T shunt (this is why she takes daily aspirin as a blood thinner). Hopefully, another heart catherization which will include another cutting balloon dilation should open up the pulmonary vein enough so that her body stops producing extra red blood cells, and her hemoglobin levels should return to normal. If her hemoglobin remains high after the cath, they will look at other options, including changing some of her medications (most likely increasing her aspirin, or adding an additional blood thinner).