More excitement

Sorry for the delayed post.  The days have gotten away from us.  

Today was not the best of days.  Laura woke up with some tightness in her chest and a more noticeable shortness of breath.  After it did not go away there was some concern that her lung may have collapsed but something was wrong.

After the alert went out we quickly had a team of 10+ on her.  UCSF is really amazing, the team showed up in force and worked to diagnose the issue. The chest x-ray showed nothing, which was good.  They did a blood gas measurement and that did show the issue.

As we have discussed in the past, due to the chronic rejection, her lungs cannot exhale enough.  To monitor this they measure her blood gases on a regular basis, which looks at the amount of CO2 in her blood.  A normal number for a healthy person is around 40-45.  Today Laura was at 78.  Last week she was in the high 60s.  This is a big jump in a short period.  The concern with an increase that significant is that the lungs are failing at a more significant rate. 

To remedy this they immediately put her back on bipap.  Bipap will force the air into the lungs and make the lungs expel the CO2.  There are limits to how long you can be on a bipap machine on the floor.  The limits differ from the floor and ICU. Due to her need for more time on the bipap she was moved to ICU today.

For the next 24/48 hours they will keep her in ICU with 1:1 monitoring. If her blood gas number can come down into a normal range while on manageable time on the bipap they will move her back to the floor.  What we really hope for is the nod on the transplant.

We have spent all of October in the hospital.  10 days in September and we are now on day 3 of November.  Laura has not been outside in 40+ days.  We know we are in the best of hands and the support has been awesome.  We cannot express how much the support from our tribe means.  As you can image everyday is a roller coaster of some kind and the thoughts, comments and prayers make a difference.  Thank you.

Hopefully we will have better news in the coming days.

Cheers and Love,

The Z's