Sunday, January 16, 2011

Just Another Weekend at PC

Our weekend went something like this...

Friday: Woke up way late with Harmonee still asleep (not like her to sleep past 8 a.m.). I woke her up, and with in minutes she had fallen back to sleep on my lap, and this time... didn't wake up. I called GI clinic and Amy told me to take her blood sugar which turned out to be 38. After giving her her emergency stress steroids and some pancake syrup, Amy told us we had two options, I could take her to the ER myself, or have an ambulance come get her to take her to the ER. Either way, from the ER she would be transported to PC.

We got to the ER not even 20 minutes later and her blood sugar had dropped to 29. They gave her an injection of hydrocortozone and started a sugary IV drip. Oxygen was then their next priorty since she was only stating at a 70 and was working pretty hard to breath. Labs, coultures and xrays were taken. Her lungs seemed pretty foggy, and an ear infection was found.

By this time an ambulance was there getting ready to load Harmonee and take her to Primary Childrens. More tests were taken at PC, and Harmonee came back positive for RSV.

Saturday: We had a rough morning with lots of suctioning, coughing and throwing up. But by noon she wasn't doing any of this, and was up giving the nurses a run for their money before long. Endocrinology also came and decided to start taking test monday to see why her sugar keeps dropping.

Sunday: RSV hitting hard. Oxygen was turned up, suctioning has been every hour, and coughing almost non stop. Unfortunetly the doctors say she is going to get a lot worse before she gets better. She is still pretty dehydrated and its not helping her lungs break up the gunk they need to in order clear themselves.

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Disaster Strikes in the OR

(Harmonee having fun in the rocking chair moving her bum and making herself rock throwing her hands in the air and squealing! Best part about a hosptial stay?: the rocking chair...)

On Wednesday night Harmonee's labs came back worse then before. Making everything move to a week earlier. Thursday morning Harmonee went into surgery.

It would be a quick procedure. They put a needle into her portal vein in radiology and push a catheter down to the narrowing in her portal vein. Then they will blow up a small balloon to help widen the narrowing and hopefully stretch out the scar tissue to keep it from closing. Its a fairly easy surgery that only takes about an hour and a half to two hours. With general anethesia and no risk except for accidentally tareing the portal vein, which is only about a 1% chance.

Surgery went to normal time when the surgean came to talk to me in the waiting room he asked me to go into the small room where they take you if they need to talk serious.

The surgeon said that Harmonee was okay but there was a complication so that they were not actually able to do the surgery. Disaster struck as soon as they put the needle into her liver. Because of the low blood flow her liver is getting chirosis and becoming hard. This made it twist funny when the needle was pushed into the vein, taring the portal vein.

They did an ultra sound and took labs to make sure that it wasn't leaking any blood and she was sent to the recovery room without a fixed portal vein.

Doctor Book and the surgeon decided that they would try this same procedure one more time. If this happens again Harmonee will have to cut open her scar for the 4th time and fix the portal vein this way.


As of now things are good. Her liver is hanging in there and even though she looks pretty tattered from the asprin dose, she is still happy go lucky!