Today was a step back.

Today was hard.

Today was exhausting.

Today will hopefully be tomorrow’s memory.

Katja has been in severe pain since 6am. Even with a lot of Dilaudid on board. Around 10am, I did what I do best…. I went into Mama Bear mode 😡

By 10:25am the entire unit was outside Katja’s room. At one point we had 27 people outside her door. STAT x-rays, labs, an echo and the heart surgical team was called. Pain management, Cardio on call, CICU staff and the whole step down unit of nurses were here.

During all of this Katja’s chest tubes did a high volume “dump” with a lot of blood. That sent everyone into a panic and the Cardiologist grabbed an echo machine to perform one himself. Her BP’s were extremely high and the CICU staff was moving things around to possibly transfer her back (she was moved to the step down unit last night).

Valium was added (she had about 15 mins of pain relief while she passed out) but ultimately did nothing. X-ray had been taken in her bed immediately after the fluid dump. It showed a pocket next to her heart where the fluid had been. She was started on a continuous IV drip of Dilaudid at max dosage and increased Lasix. She was put back on oxygen as well (her O2 was in the 85s).

Shortly after the fluid released and her IV was set up she passed out again. When she woke 15 mins later, her pain was finally getting better.

About an hour later and everything seemed to be stable. She ate a couple bites of ice cream (her first food all day) and ate some strawberries.

Another IV (3rd) was added (she was pretty mad about that) and all meds were switched back to IV. She’s been sleeping since. About an hour and a half now.

She’s sore, agitated, tired and in a generally bad mood but she’s okay. No explanation for the pain and odd bleeding. Her BP has come down and the bleeding slowed down.

Deep breaths. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow will be better. Today we refocused, reset and restarted but we didn’t give up.