Friday, June 13, 2008

CT results

This is going to be really difficult to explain without an animated picture, but I'll give it my best shot. The CT results are back. Turns out that because her heart is enlarged and her lungs are "heavy" due to lots of junk, scar tissue, lung disease, etc..., it's causing the left branch of her windpipe to get squished. (These are obviously my terms, not even close to medical terms and may not even be right). This happens when she is on her back and on her tummy, but when she is on her tummy, she is probably more comfy and doesn't send her body into stress mode like she does when she is on her back. So this is why they think she doesn't oxygenate as well on her back. There is no fix to this, so it sounds as though she is just going to take a long time to get off the ventilator. We just have to wait until her lungs get stronger for her to be able to tolerate weaning down on the vent at all. Sounds like it's going to be a long summer vacation in Peoria for us...

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