Here is a longer update for those of you following along here! Sunday, 10/15, Jackie could not keep her oxygen saturations up. A healthy person should be above 95, her acceptable range is above 85, and she was in the 60s and dropping. The doctors did not want to allow her to drop so low that a) she went in to cardiac arrest again and b) her organs would be damaged. They made the decision to place her on ECMO (extra coporeal membrane oxygenation) as a life support option, to keep her organs living and give her lungs a chance to heal. They called in the surgeon and actually had to stop the Columbus marathon to let him through. We waited in the lounge while they did the procedure right there in her room. Coming in and seeing her on ECMO was one of the scariest things we have seen so far. Her poor body was swollen from all the medicine and fluid they had to give her and she had two very large cannulas in her neck, which were flowing her blood for her. They were still extremely concerned for 2 reasons: 1) she had a pulmonary hemorrhage and had quite a bit of blood coming out of her tube in her mouth and 2) her stomach was very swollen, to the point that they were worried it may cut off blood flow to her bowels and lower extremities. Thank God they were able to find a pocket of fluid in her belly and put in a drain. The rest of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were very tense as we waited to see if the bleeding would stop and her lungs would reinflate. Bleeding while on ECMO is very dangerous, because they have to thin your blood quite a bit to prevent clots from forming. They actually had to switch the entire ECMO machine out on Monday because it was clotty. They try to avoid switching it as much as possible, because its dangerous to take her off of it while they switch and a new machine provokes an inflammatory response from the body from all the plastic. Yesterday, they had to switch out a few more pieces from the new machine because of more clots. They have been erring on the side of less blood thinners to encourage the bleeding to stop. On Wednesday, we actually had an entire day with no bleeding, which was wonderful! They decided yesterday to let her come off the paralyzing medicine she was on and she actually woke up and looked at me, Diane, Mike, and Greg. She knew we were there and responded to our voices. She even held Daddys hand! She was a bit overactive though without the paralytic and has a bit more bleeding in her tube again (but much less than it was). She looks WONDERFUL today, her swelling is down, her color is back, shes starting to look like herself again. At this point, the next step is to get a heart catherterization done to see if she has some blockage in her veins that may have been preventing her from receiving her Pulmonary Hypertension medication. PH is a disease that is not well understood, so the Doctors seem almost at a loss for what to do from here, but a heart cath is the next reasonable step. They are hoping she is ready to come off ECMO by then (early next week), but if not, they will clamp the machine and do as much as they can while she tolerates being off ECMO. Jackie still has a long road ahead to heal, but shes a fighter and she will make it happen!
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:06:40 +0000
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