Recent Events

The last few days have been anything but boring.  Mia left Primary Childrens on half a liter of oxygen just at night.  This seemed to be working well and her oxygen saturation levels were staying above the desired 90% just fine.  However Wednesday night I had to turn up the oxygen to keep her above 90%.  Then Thursday night it was worse.  When she got up on Friday I noticed that she was having a hard time breathing, she had a rapid heart rate and she was tired.  We had an appointment that day and she was later admitted to the hospital.  Her breathing continued to deteriorate.   Because we are not sure what is going on, this morning she had a procedure where a pulmonologist put a small amount of saline in her lungs and then suctioned it out again along with some stuff from her lungs.  They did this so they can test for infections.  Afterwards and Echo was done.  This showed that the left side of her heart has decreased activity, while the right side is much too large.  She also had a problem with her blood pressure being too low most of the day.  She has been on an epinephrine drip for that. Because the right side of her heart is large they thought that maybe she had a pulmonary embolism.  A CT scan ruled that out.  That is good, but it would have explained her symptoms.  

At this point we know that Mia has pulmonary hypertension.  We do not know why.  There are several possible explanations, and the doctors are doing their best to determine what is actually happening.  There are no plans right now to send her back to Salt Lake. In the meantime, Mia was intubated this morning.  She is in ICU. She is on too many drugs for me to keep track of.  The one thing that bothers her the most is the catheter.  She is pretty sick.  I am glad that we are able to be in Boise.