Another day, another update

Kate’s showing improvement. Her new heart is beating on its own. Originally, they had a pacemaker working pretty aggressively to make sure everything was behaving as needed. Today they dialed it back, and Kate’s heart is beating almost fully on its own. She is definitely showing signs of being herself, responding purposely to stimuli and being squirmy as usual.

Tomorrow we are heading back into surgery. Kate has been on ECMO the past few days but it’s not really providing what her heart needs. The right-side of her heart is struggling to deal with the situation her lungs created with her old heart. We have been hoping that ECMO would help lower the pressures but so far it doesn’t seem to be doing that. We are trying to give her lungs a chance to relax and not overpower her new heart. ECMO was providing a full supplement to her heart and lungs. Additionally, long-term ECMO use increases the chance of blood clots being sent to the brain. Tomorrow we are going to switch to a Right Ventricular Assist Device (RVAD). This device has a lower chance of blood clots to the brain and will let the left side of her heart operate normally while providing a small assist to her right-side to let it recover. This is expected to be a temporary thing only. We don’t know how temporary but according to the surgeon performing the operation, two months would be a long time. With the RVAD, we will be able to consider decreasing her sedation and letting her wake a bit.

Overall today had several checks in the “win” column and no checks in the “loss” column. We’ll take it. We would have much preferred a best-case recovery where things are better than they are. Today is better than yesterday. Here’s hoping for continued improvement.

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