Friday, May 04, 2007

Feeling MUCH Better

Oh, what a difference a day . . . and a lot less fluid . . . makes. Bailey slept SO good last night. Unfortunately, she slept through half of Survivor and most of Grey's Anatomy. Maybe a little residual anesthesia but mostly exhaustion from not being able to sleep at all the night before. Dr. Darragh is keeping us here until at least Sunday to get rid of fluid. He came in today to walk us through the medicine changes and give us the results of today's echo. All very positive. The echo had very good results. Yesterday the cath was showing worsening heart function and "numbers" compared to her cath a year ago - which, I have to tell you, was pretty frightening to hear. She's been doing so good. After the cath yesterday, he started her on a medication to make her heart pump stronger, which was to give her heart a little boost as it's probably worn down from working with all that fluid lately. Well, another thing that medication showed him during the echo today, is that her heart function was 60% better than it was last Friday. So! It's looking like it's her amiodarone that is causing all the fluid problems as well as function issues, and not just things "going bad". So, our first step is to dramatically decrease the amiodarone and introduce another drug that is supposed to keep her heart in rhythm without affecting the function of her heart muscle. But, he also put her on coumadin since he expects us to be back in here at some point during this adjustment with irregular heartbeat. At least we won't have to worry about clotting, which was something I've been a little concerned about now that she can't always tell when she goes out of rhythm.

I just can't accurately express how much better she feels today. She's still pretty tired and still has quite a bit of fluid, but she doesn't look 6 months pregnant anymore and she can rest comfortably. She was nauseous and didn't feel like even eating, and couldn't get comfortable at all, and even began having trouble breathing. She slept all through the night last night. In fact, I woke up a few times wondering if she was even alive, but quickly realized (only after a short panic attack) that the monitors would all be going off if that were the case. (Nights can really mess with your head, huh!)

So, we'll see what tomorrow brings. It's been fun hanging out with the nurses and doctors. This is the longest stay since the Berlin Heart that we've had here. So we've been falling into the same routine we had back then. But, thank goodness, it's a much shorter stay this time.

Thank you all for hanging in there with us, and thank you for all the prayers!

Talk to you soon,
Angie

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am so glad things are better. I was reading the blog to Daniel and he said, "That little girl is as tough as they come." I have to agree. You two hang in there. We love you.

Jennifer Riley

12:54 PM  

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