Mostly Good News, Increasing Blood Concerns

The doctor just said that overall, today is a positive one. The vent mode Denise is on continues to serve her well. She's increasing the number of breaths that she's attempting on top of what the vent is giving her. They're going to wake her to the point of trying to get her to respond to simple physical commands. She won't be coherent enough to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity or anything like that. Then again, neither she nor I were ever coherent enough for that. The chest x-ray shows mild lung improvement from yesterday to today. She's better able to get rid of the carbon dioxide buildup, as well. Doctor says that since oxygenation is going well, they'll be able to put the breathing issues on the back burner (but continue to watch it).
The gastrostomy tube is being tolerated well. They'll keep adjusting the nutrition they give her.
Uterine exam shows good contraction after birth, and bleeding is about right.
One of the nurses that was gone for a few days came back & noticed that Denise isn't as swollen.
Ultrasound of legs showed no clots. I didn't think to ask about results from abdominal & female organs ultrasounds. I believe that these will point the direction to take (or not) in treating the possibility of SPT (previous post).
The most recent cultures don't show any growth of viruses, bacteria, or fungus that we're not already dealing with. That's good to hear.

So all in all, it was nice to again hear so many things going well (when in critical condition, I think that "going well" means "stable" or "not getting worse").

With all those things being stable, the doctor is focusing more attention on some blood concerns. Denise's hemoglobin count has been drifting lower. It's at 7.5. Doctor said that they usually try to keep it up to at least 10. But since Denise seems to be doing well with the oxygenation, current thinking suggests that hemo can go down to 7 and still be adequate to keep her oxygenated. So the doctors have a puzzle of figuring out what's going on with the blood. I was told that she may be developing antibodies to the blood from other people (so they don't want to give too many transfusions if they can help it). Or there may be bleeding in the gastro-intestional tract (they'll be checking... I think I remember hearing that the steroid could be causing some bleeding here). Could be a bone marrow problem. Could be due to the infection destroying a lot of blood. could be that Denise has developed antibodies against her own blood. I don't like the thought of her having developed an auto-immune problem. But we'll have to wait & see what the hemotologist & other specialists have to say. When you're on this many drips, and when there have been so many procedures done, the side effects can come from just about anywhere and very hard to pinpoint.

About Denise missing mommy, lots of you were reading my mind when emailing the suggestion of having the kids tape record themselves for Denise. I've got the recorder ready to go! Now that I've got my work schedule pretty much nailed down, I'm going to start contacting those of you that have offered to help with the kids, as well as looking around for child care. Since the kids don't have mommy, I'd like them to stay together so they at least have each other. I'm aiming to keep care fairly consistent, and close as possible to home for the coming months. Thanks for the heap of emails! Not only is it nice to post them on the walls for when Denise wakes up, it's been super-edifying to read all the well-wishing & prayers, offers of support, short notes of encouragement, long essays on how Denise has touched your lives... all of it! Keep it up, and keep up those posts to the blog (both encouraging and medically technical). Someone brought up that this will be a great thing for Denise to read some day. Darn tootin'!