Day 8 - post procedure

· Ruby's IWK Journey

Written by Thomas

They challenged Ruby's heart again this afternoon. It was a bit stressful to watch, but there were lots of people there watching and taking care of her. The surgeon told us that it went better then yesterday, she was able to stay off the machine a lot longer, but she still isn't ready yet. The pressures in her lungs is too high so her oxygen saturation drops below 80%, not ideal. He said that the left side of her heart seems good to go and the right has mild to moderate restriction of flow and mild to moderate leakage. Under normal circumstances it would be fine, but with the lung pressures it isn't good. Also, the right side of the heart is still thick and sluggish. It is squeezing but not relaxing enough, so it still needs more time.

We still have to be patient, they are increasing her dose of lung pressure meds which should help things.

They also put in a new breathing tube in, there was some yeast growing in there which they've put her on antibiotics for, but they wanted to change it out just in case and put in a clean one. She had some secretions that they suctioned out, Dr. Foster (the intensivist) didn't think it was related to some kind of infection, but just due to her lying down for so long.