Mira's heart seems to have a mind of its own

Mira's heart seems to have a mind of her its own...Yes

Written Oct 27, 2011 12:11pm by Amber Gannon Medina

We are trying to get used to this rollercoaster of a ride that recovery seems to be. I understand that Mira had open heart surgery, and so I am realistic that she is going to have a long healing process. However, its difficult to see her making such positive baby steps forward, only to have her take a little nosedive.

We got transferred to one of Mira's doctors yesterday, instead of her nurse. First not so great signs...He let us know that Mira's condition had destabilized a bit over night-the lactic acid was once again present in her blood, her blood pressure had been up and down, they had had to give her more medication for an arrythymia she had developed, her heart was pumping too much blood to her lungs and not enough to her torso. With all of these new complications, they ordered an echo and found that there is a possibility her stent might be too big for her heart-allowing too much blood to pass through her aorta. They also noticed that her aortic arch-the part of her heart that was widened during surgery-may be narrowing. Early yesterday there was talk of bringing her back into the OR to put what is called a band on her stent, which would lessen the amount of blood flow.

The doctors preferred to sit tight and try to manage of all this with medication. I think we preferred that too! They tinkered around with medication and by last night, she had stabilized and was doing much much better.

The sweet and amazing thing about all of this, is that Mira's heart is trying to "take over" from her pacemaker and her medications. There is no doubt that this lady is super woman (at least to me there isn't)

Her doctor does not come back to work until tomorrow, so the plan now is to hold tight and see if she does well with this medication. Last night and this morning they had to give her more sedatives because she was up for THREE hours straight, looking around and moving:) 

Hoping she continues to improve today and there is no need to surgically correct anything!