Slogging Through

Aunt I seems to have taken a turn for the worse. She went over 16 hours being capped a week-and-a-half ago, apparently with no problems. But the next day, she told the resp therapists at 4 hours that she wanted to stop. Her numbers were fine, she seemed to not be having any problems breathing, she just wanted to stop. (Bear in mind, she needed to go 12 hours a day for 3 days in a row before she could attempt going for 24 hours.)

Well, she worked her way back up in hours and last Thursday around 8:00 in the morning, they were going to start her first 24-hour stint. She did fine through the day, and had a friend of my dad's girlfriend (Trish) come in around 7:30 or 8:00 at night. At 4:30, she said she was doing well enough, that she told Trish to go home; she'd be fine. At 7:30 - 23.5 hours into her first 24-hour capping - her numbers just crashed. Heartbeat, blood pressure, oxygen saturation level - everything went off the charts.

The nurses got her stabilized and put her back on "the blue tube" (oxygen through her trach). Her oxygen number got better, but not as good as it had been. While my dad was visiting over the weekend, he watched as they started to sink even further. They did something else and got her stabilized again, but dad said she didn't look too good and was exceedingly tired.

On Sunday, he got a call from the hospital that her numbers were so bad again that they decided to put her back on the ventilator, and they moved her to an ICU room on the 3rd floor. Last night, dad got another call to tell him that her heart had stopped. It was just for a short time, and they got her revived and stabilized again, so they didn't ask him to come in.

It doesn't look good. I spoke to her pulmonary doctor yesterday; his assessment was that she would never get the trach removed. She is so weak and frail, her system is so compromised, she has so many things going wrong, that the slightest problem will cause her to backslide significantly. He said this latest problem could be a collapsed lung, pneumonia, a plug - they did some blood tests and have her scheduled for an x-ray. She's so weak that even something as simple as having to cough could set her back.

At this point, I'm just praying she's not in too much pain. Please [pray/chant/wish really hard] with me.

Despite this, I was able to find some funny at the LOLCats site. Let's see if I can post the picture and not look like a total loser. (Well, it's there, but I can't figure out how to resize it. Click on it; it should take you to the icanhascheezburger.com site.)


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