The Oxygen Roller Coaster

Lillian has been varying wildly with her oxygen levels lately. She had been put on .5 liters of oxygen to help boost her saturations into the mid 80s, but lately has had them up at 99%. Since she's a blood mixer, that really isn't a good situation, as we want them a bit lower. We decided today to turn off the oxygen to see how she did without any. Her stats dropped to what we liked for a while, but quickly went down to the mid 60s, which is far too low for us (and frankly kind of scary with how fast they dropped). So now we've put her on .15 liters of oxygen, which is basically as low as you can go and still be on oxygen. This appears to be doing the trick for now, and hopefully it will last, but at the same time, I can't help but be worried about her pulmonary arteries (refresher, the ones that carry blood to the lungs) shrinking or shriveling, like has happened with other transplant patients. We couldn't tell if they were without a cath, but a little stat ping ponging isn't enough to warrant a cath, so for now we will keep an eye on it and pray for stability.

Oxygen (in blue) just a tad too high

Katie reminded me yesterday of something I've forgotten to put on the blog so far. A while ago, Lillian's labs came back slightly different from before, showing that she had zero antibodies (or antigens, I forget) in her blood. This is bad for normal people, but for Lillian, it is extremely good, mainly for lowering her risk of rejection. When she was first listed, her level was at 18% (18% of what, I'm not sure), which was low, but this new level is better. Anything we can do right now to lower the risk of rejection is worth it, including getting her as big as possible. So we have positive news on that front. The doctors have told us that Lillian is a text book example of a perfect transplant candidate, and now would be the perfect time to do it, so we can only hope it comes soon.

Katie posted some pictures of the community health fair the other day, but I'm adding a few more below and also some of Annabelle taking her dog to the "dog park" (i.e., the kitchen) earlier this morning. Commence picture dump!

Getting ready for the walk

Faster than lightning! I actually love how this one is blurry

Talking to the nurses about her dogs.

Checking Snoopy's reflexes

Exploring an operating room

One of Children's robot surgons (not normally used for cardiac surgery)

Annabelle's fancy finger cast

Giving Snoopy a shot