Lots of information and changes......

Well.......sigh. Lots going on today and yesterday since we brought the princess home from the hospital on Saturday. This was the consensus on Saturday when we left Bronson: echo looked good except for some mitral valve leakage (which we knew about), belly ultrasound showed a lot of air/gas and didn't look concerning, labs all looked better from previous day after a bolus and continuous maintenance fluid over night, and X-ray indicated pneumonia and was treated with IV antibiotics in the hospital and came home with script for it. I will say that Sunday morning, she ate breakfast extremely well which indicated to us that she was on the upward swing. Throughout the day, she did fairly well and then that evening, she was swollen bigger than ever. Ugh! Worried all evening on what we should do, we let her sleep and then in the morning, first thing, call Meg and the pediatrician. Called both and the decision was to head to U of M. Right decision! Since we arrived at the ER today, we have confirmed that she does have pneumonia and her lab work has improved. All same as Bronson's results. Good! But......after doing another ultrasound of her belly, we were told that her bowel was EXTREMELY loaded with poop! What!? What about the air diagnosis? Grrrrrrr. Wish that was it! On her echo, it concluded that her left atrium is smaller therm her right, of course the mitral valve leak, and her heart is very stiff when it's supposed to be relaxing after it contracts. Both of those things are sign of possible rejection. Sigh. So, being cautious, we are headed over to the ICU tonight for close monitoring as they do the following in preparation for a heart cath and biopsy first thing in the morning: give her an IV diuretic to try and release the fluid from her tissues to release the swelling, give her Albumin to help increase the protein levels in the blood stream so that when they give her more fluids to re-hydrate her, the fluid will hopefully stay in the vessels instead of the tissue. They will also give her a large dose of steroids in preparation for any treatment that needs to be done in case we are dealing with rejection. Now, if it is rejection, we were relieved to hear that this is treatable and she will be fine once the meds are figured out and dosed for her acceptance. Thank You, Lord! Please join us once again in prayer that her little body still likes the donor heart and that we can set our minds at ease of this worry. Amen!
Now, the other issue is with her poor little poop filled belly. Thinking that all of these issues are heart related, they aren't going to worry about
that at this time. One thing first and dealing with the most important one is the priority. After the results of the biopsy, we will be able to move forward with treatment but knowing if it is rejection or not will determine how they go about treating the other things.
Thank you again to all of you who have prayed for us and continue to lift our family. I will update again after the heart cath tomorrow morning.
Heart Blessings ~
Suzie