The results are in from Haven’s blood tests regarding her infection:  she has staphylococcus.  You probably are more familiar with “staph infection”.  Unfortunately, they say she has a pretty serious form of it.  We were obviously concerned about how this infection would affect her heart.  The doctors said that the body’s response to it is very individual for each patient.  This gives us all a good explanation for the blood pressure issues she was having earlier this week.  Since then, she seems to be handling it just fine.  Her pressures are back to normal and she is acting much more like herself and not sleeping 24/7.  They removed the line they believed to have caused the infection and gave her another one in the other arm.  They will continue to take blood tests frequently until they show that the infection is gone.  Unfortunately, due to the seriousness of this infection and the fragile condition her body is in, she will need to receive I.V. antibiotics for six weeks after the infection has left her body.  Of course, we initially thought this meant we would have to stay in the hospital for another six weeks, but we found out that if she is well enough, they can send her home with and I.V.  We would have to be trained on how to use it properly and change dressings, and a home nurse would be visiting often to help monitor as well. 

You’ll be happy to know that her chest drainage has all but stopped over the past 24 hours.  We are very excited about this because this is essentially what we’ve been waiting for for nearly two months!  She had four chest tubes in (two on each side).  They pulled one from each side this morning.  They are leaving the other two in until after we are sure that it isn’t going to start back up again.  Now is the time when the pleurodesis procedures can really do the work they are supposed to.  Since there is virtually no more fluid, the lungs have a chance to stick to the chest wall and get “stuck” there.  This, in theory, will clamp off any thing in there that was causing the leakage. 

Of course, as we’ve mentioned before, food still hasn’t entered the picture.  We’re holding off on that as long as possible to give the chest ample time to seal up.  We’ll probably restart some milk next week.  Once they see that the milk isn’t causing the drainage to come back, then they will pull the other two chest tubes.  Otherwise, we’ve started weaning off of the ventilator, since that is the next big step, but it will probably be a long weaning process due to the amount of fluid that she is retaining in her tissues.  It’s hard to breathe when you’re all puffy!