Monday, January 30, 2012

detailed update on my Mom's lung transplant

(This post is from Crystal. She is a lot better at explaining details than me. heading over to see my Mom again right now.)

Today (yesterday) was a little bit rougher than yesterday for Edith. The new lungs are not quite ready to work on their own yet. It's hard to say what is expected at this point because there is no "normal" for this. She is on 40% oxygen & is occasionally, but not regularly breathing over the ventilator. Her heart has been having to work harder than normal & she has had some trouble keeping her blood pressure up. Around 4pm she was put on a intraaortic balloon pump (IABP) to help give her heart some rest. Her blood pressure had come up some later in the evening. Earlier in the day they had turned off her sedation drip, but had to restart it this evening when they did the IABP. Gary got a call around 11pm from the hospital letting him know that they were going to put her on ECMO tonight.
I'm trying to give more details than facebook status updates allow for, but it's quite difficult as there is so much going on and most is pretty difficult to explain (I'm digging in my brain way back to nursing school for most of this stuff). For those of you who want to get a mental picture, here it goes. She has the following... ventilator, multiple central lines, foley, 2 chest tubes, 2 JP drains, IABP, oral gastric tube, peripheral IV, cooling blanket, and probably several more things that i'm forgetting about.

Specific things to pray for:
•Cardiac index to improve- should be above 2 & hers has been between 1.6-1.8

•Temperature to come down- she seems to be running a low grade temp. Blood & sputum cultures were sent last night & today to check for infection.

•Lungs to work fully on their own!!

•Pain- she seems to be comfortable while sedated, but i cannot imagine the pain she would be in while awake.

3 comments:

Lindsey N said...

We know your family has been waiting and praying for this for so long. We're praying for you guys to know how to be care takers in the best way and for Edith's body to adapt quickly. Love from Nashville.

Teresa said...

Thanks Crystal! We are praying for you all. OUR GOD is good. He has a plan.

patrick mitchell said...

thanks Lindsey & Teresa!