Tuesday 9 December 2014

Blood: It's in you to give!

Greetings all,

The last few days have been pretty good for Alley as far as her breathing goes. Yesterday, she was able to be off her ventilator for 6 hours and today she went 7 hours. They also may try her off again tonight for a little bit, they will see how tired she is.

She was also able to go for a walk today and made it 25 meters. The physiotherapist said that she was able to control her breathing better and Alley said it was the first time she didn't feel like passing out. Hurray!

Over the past few days, they discovered that she has 3 bleeding ulcers in her intestines. She was losing blood and her hemoglobin was dropping, so they decided to scope her stomach  and intestines and that is what they found. Because of the bleeding, she needed to get 3 blood transfusions. They were able to kind of clamp them off and than decided to redo it today. So today, they did the scope again and were able to totally clamp off the " super ulcer" as the doctor called it, and made sure there were no more. The doctor said that the ulcers could have been a result of either her blood thinner that she is on because of her blood clot ( so this was stopped yesterday), stress on her body due to surgery, the antibiotics that she is on, or a number of things combined. Alley is hoping that now that the scopes are hopefully done, she is able to have some food as she is getting hungry.

The doctors also took out her last 2 chest tubes today. Hurray for 2 more lines gone!

 

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great to hear that two more tubes are out. Glad she got the blood and she may feel a little less tired. Thinking and praying for the whole family

Sue said...

thanks for the news and updates. Glad to hear they've discovered the problems and are working at fixing them. She must be thrilled to be getting off the tubes and whatnots. I have to say that you are quite the creative family... beautiful pottery pieces. hugs to you all

~G said...

She almost beat my record of 4..! :) I suppose she made up for that lack with the transplant though... Glad she's doing much better! tell her we all say Hi and look forward to hearing about the rest of her adventures!

Dave VanSlyke said...

So glad she's making progress but wowsers - does the road to recovery gave to be so full of potholes? Alley is showing just how tough she really is. Here's to continuing improvement and better health!

The pottery pieces are wonderful! What a creative family you all are.

Please wish Alley all the best for us.

- Dave and Marsha