One more step in the right direction!

9:15am

Last night I talked with Dr. D and said it was suggested we might go home Monday, does he feel like that's a reasonable time frame.  He said yes, there's no reason he can think of that we couldn't go home then as long as things continue as they are.  He said we'll likely do Viagra for a year which we'll start on soon and we'd need 24-48 hours after starting that to know how it's doing with her before going home.  We can get the pacer wires out probably today and the chest drain tube as well.  So Monday sounded wonderful!

Today when I got in the nurse also said they're taking out the pacer wires and the drain tube today and starting her on Enalapril (a vaso-dilator which helps with the blood pressure, similar to Captopril which she was on before surgery).  She also is now on oral lasix instead of IV and she's on Zantac just to protect her stomach with all the meds going through.  Then she surprised me by saying that she thinks we'll be going home TOMORROW!  Sounds great, except it also doesn't quite correspond, if she needs to be on the Viagra for 24-48 hrs and they haven't started it yet and haven't even gotten the orders to start it today and just last night Dr. D said Monday... so I'm not sure which is which.

Maybe the new echo showed that her PH levels were low enough she doesn't need the Viagra?  Maybe we're going home just on 2 of the 3 meds we were on before surgery and maybe even without O2?  She spent the night without the O2 yesterday though she did go down to 50 and sat pretty low with her HR overnight-- but not low enough to pace (50) so they didn't use the O2.

So... hopefully more answers a little later on but for now we're in a holding pattern to find out whether she's being medicated for the PH and whether she's going to need any home O2.

9:45am

Dr. C, one of the intensivists that had made rounds this morning and suggested we go home tomorrow stopped and chatted with me while I was making a phone call in the hallway and reiterated what he'd told the nurse this morning.  I asked him about what Dr. D had told me yesterday and the other meds/O2 issues and whether they'd talked.  He stood there and paged Dr. D and left him a message with why he'd called so they'll talk but it sounds like her pulmonary pressures were in a range that she wouldn't need any medications and her HR was stable enough and her SATs high enough that she'd need no other intervention than what's already been started!!

Hopefully he'll stop back in shortly after talking with Dr. D again and deciding what to do with the pressures.