April’s Adventures

So after the SVT episode mom had 2 more times in the hospital stay of 3 days. Finally after her heart starting cooperating they put her on an oral med to keep it steady. She was finally able to get her port in Thursday evening and released. I woke up Friday morning and decided that I needed to stay home and just spend time with her and help as much as I could. She was feeling pretty good Friday morning so around noon we decided to just get out of the house for a short trip. She wanted to get a Wig picked out before her hair starts falling out. This is recommended to get a closer match to your hair. Well she walked from the house to my car in the driveway and was short of breath again. The Cardiologist told her on Thursday that if she got short of breath without doing much that she needed to get back to the ER right away. Well she brushed it off at first but after about a block down the road we turned around and I called her doctor. We were informed to get in ASAP. If the fluid increased then she could go into cardiac tamponade: (https://www.google.com/health/ref/Cardiac+tamponade ).

This scared her pretty bad as it should. So we went to the ER around 1pm on Friday. They did another Echo and consulted her cardiologist and he said she needed to be transported to St. Joe’s and needed to get in ASAP to get the fluid drained. Because they found a mass as well they wanted to do a Pericardial Window to drain the fluid and take a biopsy of the mass. They got her to St Joe’s around 5:30 and took her at 6:00p.m. for surgery. They surgery went well over all. They drained over a pint of fluid around her heart and took the biopsy. They had some issues getting in because she has a lot of scare tissue from the Radiation from her cancer in 1991.  She drained a lot of fluid after the surgery as well because they left a chest tube in for 36 hours after the surgery. She recovered well from the surgery and is hopefully getting discharged in a few hours. She is so thankful to have had the surgery done and that worry is now hopefully gone and she can focus on the chemo. The oncologist came by yesterday and said that he wants her to start ASAP so they moved up the chemo to tomorrow. He is very optimistic because she was put in the 3rd trial group which is the new med and has so far had the best results!

Over all it was a very long week. She was only out of the hospital for about 12 hours between the two stays. I was able to stay at St Joe’s with her so I was there Friday and Saturday nights. She seems to be feeling a lot better, breathing better, and hopes to sleep better now as well. Tomorrow starts Chemo and she is ready to get going on that. She is a fighter and if anyone can get through all this crap it is her!

Some of you noticed Josh’s picture on Facebook. He had a doctor’s apt for what they thought was a bacterial infection. Well the meds weren’t helping him so on Friday at noon they told him to go to the ER. He waited all afternoon until mom was moved. He wanted to make sure she was going to be moved and wanted to go to the ER at the hospital she was going to be at. He is doing ok and has to follow up with another doctor this week for maybe more tests.

Thanks for all your prayers and support. To those of you on facebook thanks for the messages. I may not get back to all of you but I do appreciate every kind word and prayer and support. Our family is in need of that so much right now! We are all fighting with her to beat this! She is still way too young and has so much more life in her hopefully! I know more than anything she will keep fighting and has such a great attitude about everything!