Category Archives: hospital

by | March 3, 2012 · 11:10 pm

One small step for Lucy…

She still hasn’t had the giant leap towards going home. Dr. Rousey (hematologist) stopped by this morning. He and Dr. Thurmes are still digging though research studies to see if Pradaxa will be the drug of choice, with Arixtra as the runner-up. Pradaxa apparently has a shorter half-life, which is helpful in case of a complication. Lucy likes the fact that it is oral and not an injection (OK, so do I!). Neither drug will need as frequent blood testing as Coumadin requires. I think it is because both drugs manage specific coagulation factors while Coumadin takes more of a “scorched earth” approach.

The IV antibiotics are still going. Right now, she gets Vancocin (vancomycin) and ampicillin, and both are available orally. While the hematologists are researching Pradaxa, Lucy is still on IV heparin. She has not needed a blood test because she hit the therapeutic range.

Julie stopped by this afternoon and really made Lucy’s day! It was nice having nearly no interruptions while Julie was here.

Lucy took two walks today. The first was about 50 feet. Her second was close to 150 feet. She would go farther when they finally disconnect the damned IVs. Her left ankle is loosening up a little. On her second walk, she was able to get her heel on the floor while walking, at least for a few steps. There was still discomfort walking, but she was not wiped out afterwards. Like last time, her pain started decreasing when she sat down.

Dr. Thurmes will be on rounds tomorrow and said he will stop by. He’s been so good to Lucy through this ordeal. He might have the home care anticoagulant and antibiotic choices tomorrow. If so, she could be released tomorrow.

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by | March 2, 2012 · 10:08 pm

Home on Sunday?

Diane visited Lucy this morning. She always manages to cheer Lucy up and today was no different.

Lucy received some good news today. The Infectious Disease group is very comfortable that the fever spikes and redness in her leg are both clot related. She is still on antibiotics. Her Heparin Factor X is at 0.29. Therapeutic range starts at 0.30.

Dr. Thurmes came by and gave her some better news. She will be going on either Arixtra (injection) or Pradaxa (oral), so her heparin level can be close to therapeutic range. Her IV heparin will be stopping soon, and she will switch to oral antibiotics. He mentioned Sunday as a possible release date. Lucy must be off the IVs before going home.

Lucy’s left ankle is still extremely stiff. She has not tried walking with her walker yet. Maneuvering is interesting enough without having to coordinate with someone pushing the IV stand. If she gets rid of her IVs tomorrow, she will start walking around and get used to being on her feet again.

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by | March 1, 2012 · 10:48 pm

March came in like a lion (in a good way)

Lucy had a very busy day with all the people in and out to check on her.

Dr. Dettis (infectious disease) was by and told her he was better than 90% certain her fevers and leg redness were solely from the clots, but he wants her to be on antibiotics for another day or two. That was reassuring for her to hear.

One of the hospital chaplains stopped by, and then Dr. Thurmes (hematologist) was by to see how she was doing. Unfortunately, her hemoglobin was at 7.1 so she received one unit of blood just before going to IR. He feels the Coumadin and Lovenox are not working and had two other anticoagulants in mind. One is Pradaxa, which is a pill. The other is a once per day injection which she couldn’t remember. We are hoping Pradaxa is a workable solution. Dr. Thurmes had a couple of areas he needed to research first.

Her TPA procedure got delayed because of a couple higher priority cases. She was originally scheduled for 8:30 and finally went down at 12:45. The procedure completed by 1:15. She no longer is on TPA and they can stop doing the neurological tests in another four hours. She should get more sleep tonight and have fewer interruptions.

She did have to have her arm IV access changed. Getting a different one in was very problematic. Her arms have really been poked. Certain drugs cannot be administered into a port, and her antibiotics are all incompatible with heparin.

Julie called tonight and like last night didn’t get much time to talk to Lucy. The arm access IV adventure was just beginning then.

Lucy got to sit on the edge of the bed for over a half hour. She even managed to stand up before getting back into bed. Tomorrow she will get out of bed and go for some short walks.

Getting the TPA catheter removed is a step towards going home. The next two steps are getting her off IV heparin and letting her leg heal a bit more. Getting the heparin level in line will probably be the most difficult given her experiences. We still don’t have a firm release date.

Keep your fingers crossed, and thank you for all the thoughts, prayers, positive energy, and good wishes!

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by | February 29, 2012 · 9:55 pm

Progress by small steps, not leaps and bounds

Lucy had another TPA procedure this morning. It took less than 90 minutes. They will need to repeat it tomorrow, but they made progress. She still can’t get out of bed and she is to keep her leg as still as possible. Lucy seems to be in a little less discomfort today. Lucy doesn’t have a firm time for tomorrow’s procedure, but it could be as early as 7:30. She is really tired today because of being awakened every two hours for the last couple days, and now has at least one more night of tests.

The hospital plays “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” when a baby is born. I swear it was playing on a continuous loop today. There is an anecdote stating more babies are born when during bad weather because of the drop in air pressure. The barometer here dropped to 29.23 in/Hg early this morning and is slowly rising.

Julie called tonight, but Lucy had to get a blood draw a few minutes into the call. Lucy has bruised arms because of all her arm draws. The heparin isn’t helping with that either.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. Thank you for spending some time reading this and have a Happy Leap Day!

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by | February 28, 2012 · 10:57 pm

“You put your left leg in, you put your left leg out…”

The weather was supposed to be very challenging today. The Twin Cities was under a Winter Storm Warning due to anticipated heavy snow, sleet, freezing rain and high winds. As the morning went on, the storm shifted farther to the north. The Warning was then downgraded to an Advisory. As of this writing, it is raining hard. There is still a chance of freezing rain tonight and a chance of a couple of inches of snow tomorrow. The day had an unexpected turn of events, but it was in our favor.

Lucy’s day had an unexpected turn of events, but in her favor. Marynne from Minnesota Oncology visited with her this morning because Dr. Thurmes was unavailable. Lucy’s leg is improving very slowly. Dr. Nashawaty feels that since Lucy had not had a nosebleed in several days, perhaps the TPA catheter option is available.

Her next visitor was Dr. Dittes, an Infectious Disease specialist. He felt that Lucy may have cellulitis but acknowledged to her that her blood cultures and blood tests show no obvious indication of a bacterial infection. He also told her that her blood clots could be the majority of the fever spikes and redness. He changed the antibiotic she was on to two different IV antibiotics. There is no cause for concern.

Marynne came back a bit later. She was going to see if Interventional Radiology wanted to do the TPA procedure. The best guess was that Lucy would have it done tomorrow morning. They had time today and got to her about 1:30 this afternoon.

The procedure went very quickly. They completed it by 2:45. There was a very large clot in her thigh. The clot in her calf was small enough that they were going to let nature take its course. Her left leg was less clogged than her right leg was a couple of weeks ago. We hope that means she will not need subsequent procedures and her recovery time will be shorter. It will be a couple of days before she will be able to do the Hokey Pokey.

Of course having the procedure means she also moved from 8th floor to 3rd floor. The first move was into a two bed room. She moved again about 20 minutes later to a private room.

Her evening is winding down now that there isn’t as much activity. She knows sleeping will be tough tonight because they have to wake her every two hours to do a neurology check. Lucy talked to Diane and Julie on the phone tonight and that helped brighten her day. I found the beaded owl pictured below in the gift shop. It is beaded and stands about 6″ tall.

Here’s hoping Leap Day goes well for her. We wish all of you a good evening and have a Happy Leap Day tomorrow!

beaded owl

Lucy’s newest owl friend

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