Chest Tube Issues

Got the CT scan done today. Haven't heard official results. There's some kind of pocket of either blood or fluid between her sternum and her heart. One of the chest tubes goes up to that spot, so we're not sure why it's not draining. Maybe a chest tube clogged. Her chest tubes are set up so that there are two tubes coming out of her belly and they tie into one tube that drains into the box. Tomorrow they're going to give each of the two tubes its own box to drain into so they can tell if one of them is draining the most. If one isn't draining, they can remove that one, and they might try to unclog the one that's going up underneath her sternum if they think they need to. She still has quite a bit of pain in her chest. She's supposed to be walking quite a bit, but she finds it pretty uncomfortable to stand up straight, so she's not really wanting to walk. She's been really sleepy the last couple days, and they came in tonight to say they're going to give her a blood transfusion because her hemoglobin has been decreasing quite a bit over the last few days. Hopefully that will take care of her sleepiness and fatigue. And hopefully it will help her jump into homework - she's feeling pretty overwhelmed right now. I tried to give her a pep talk about taking baby steps. It was pretty funny, she was getting really sleepy every time she'd try to work on homework - Dr. Cordes, the rounding cardiologist this week, came in during that time she was fighting sleep and he said, "Well, yeah! That would happen to me every time I tried to study philosophy!" Ha! She has been unusually unsociable these past few days -- I'm hoping the blood will help her feel quite a bit better.

Really not much more going on. They're not saying anything about going home yet - they're working on the chest tube issue.

I guess that's about it for today. They're continuing to put up more Christmas decorations. So pretty!

Good night.
Angie