Seriously, what next?

Another miracle yet again...yesterday Rebecca's nurse and the charge nurse were talking about how the unit had no available rooms on the unit.  The charge nurse was actually contacting surgeons to see if any scheduled surgery's could be cancelled because the unit could not take any additional patients.  Our nurse said that we should be glad that we got a room the night before.  Thank God for the cardiologist who was following Rebecca in the RCNIC who just could not get rid of the feeling that Rebecca needed to be transfered to CICU.  It had to be the Holy Spirit tugging at his heart that Rebecca had to go to the CICU on that specific day at that specific time.  

One of my favorite moments up here so far was last night when Brandon and I went to see Joanna.  It was time for her to eat so we usually hold her while she gets her food.  She is always so awake so Brandon and I decided to have some fun.  We wanted Joanna to love music as our family does so we decided it was time for her to hear her first song.  We thought it appropriate for her first song to be "What Faith Can Do".  After enjoying her first song, we decided she needed to look at pictures and watch videos of her sisters.  She had some great expressions through this time and Brandon and I were cracking up at her.  It felt so good to go see her without worrying about her while we were there and truly having a good time visiting.

Now for today. When we got to Rebecca's room she had puffed up even more overnight instead of going down since starting her lasix drip. They decided to start her on another diuretic to get rid of some of the edema. She gained 500 grams or 1.1 pounds in 24 hours which was purely fluid. You cannot imagine how swollen she is. When they made this decision they said they didn't expect her to have negative fluid today only be less positive. This means her total volume intake of all fluids and meds minus her total urine output. She actually ended up being a little negative because she peed like crazy all day. We were very excited about this because in case I didn't mention it, she is very swollen. She looks pitiful. She had a blood test this morning that is used to gauge her degree of infection. It is called a CD64. on 5/13 her level was over 7 and today it was a little over 4 which means she looks to be getting over her infection.

This late afternoon proved to be a little more exciting than we had expected. First of all I must mention that Jessica's aunt Sue and her Castrale Grandparents came to visit today and also Chris, a friend from church to do some video and still photo work. Chris and I went to see Joanna first and he took lots of video of her doing her thing, sleeping and eating. When we left there we were talking about the "status" of Rebecca as we were headed over there. I told him she was stable, but only as stable as you can be 2 days after death being mentioned.  I jokingly said we could walk in there and there be a bunch of people in there doing stuff. That didn't happen..... yet. We got to see Rebecca and she was doing just the same so he began his recording of her. Her nurse today was in training because she was kind of new to the CICU unit, so she had another nurse watching over her. She was telling us about how she was comfortable with pretty much everything except for when things crash quickly. We actually told her that wasn't going to happen in this room. Well Ms. Rebecca decided to put on a little show for Chris and defy us. He was in the corner camera rolling when she decided to desat a little down into the 70's. No big deal, the "mentor" nurse came in and asked if she needed any help and she said no, we were just suctioning her. Usually this is no problem and she comes right back. Not this time. This happened a few days ago too. Before we knew it, her sats were in the teens, her heart rate dropped, two respiratory nurses and a fellow came in and they were bagging her, putting a different suction down her tube into her lungs and trying to get her back up. It definitely got tense for a little bit, but Chris kept the camera rolling. We both kind of thought they would make him stop recording but they were a bit too occupied I guess. It was no time and she had recovered and back to normal. She had just accumulated a lot of thick mucus again that was clogging things up. Soon after that, we were told about an X-ray that she had gotten early this morning for her left leg. Seems there was concern Tuesday night about her leg being a little "floppy" around the ankle and there was some bruising. X-ray revealed a fractured tibia (larger of the 2 lower leg bones). I was immediately concerned about when and how this could have happened. We knew she was susceptible to fractures because of the medication she was on, but she had signs on her bed to handle her with care. None of the doctors or nurses could tell us what prompted this X-ray to be done. Did someone see something from another one of her X-rays of her chest, did someone mishandle her and suspected they fractured it by accident. We don't and probably won't know exactly what happened but we know the Fellow from Tuesday night ordered the X-ray because he thought her leg/ankle was floppy. It apparently isn't floppy from the fracture because X-ray shows it is not displaced. A couple of Orthopaedic Doctors were there to show us the X-rays and wrapped it in a cotton gauze-like wrap. They expect it to heal in a week or two with no problems. Just another day in our life of ups and downs. Jessica and I ended our night again with Joanna which is such a blessing to see that little angel growing and developing everyday. She was having some very minor desat issues tonight so we only held her for a little while then put her back into her bed to chill. Her nurse tonight was a new one for us. She has had Joanna before but it must have been a night we weren't there for her shift. We were showing her some pictures of the twins on blog when she saw the "The Twins" "followers". She said it was like the twins had disciples.