Morning 4/30/10

The cardiologists stepped aggressively in yesterday which is a really good sign. They felt Jill was well enough strength-wise and health-wise (related to the pneumonia) to start putting her through their testing plan. The MRI was first, and that came back normal. Yesterday, they did an angiogram. In this process, the doctor inserts a catheter into her femural artery and guides a wire up to her heart where he injects some dye to examine the blood flow in her arteries looking for blockages. Jill came out of this with flying colors, no blockages. She was a bit sore and went through another mild sedation but was doing well by late last night. She was doing so well that the hospital gave her the ok to move out of CCU and into the next level of care in a room with a view of the golf course (and the parking lot but golf course sounds a lot better).

This morning she was scheduled to do an ablation where they will insert a catheter into a large vein in her leg/groin and run a wire up to certain muscles in her heart where energy is sent to try to identify and/or normalize an abnormal heart rhythm. This test is scheduled for this morning.

In addition, the cardiologist decided he wanted to accelerate Jill's recovery by performing another procedure while she is anesthetized. He decided to insert a defibrillator pacemaker (AICD) in her chest. He has been talking about this for the last few days as a potential option for Jill but a final decision was made this morning. The defibrillator pacemaker will shock her heart back into the proper rhythm should anything like this ever happen again. Needless to say Jill has had a bit of hard time coping with this outcome due to her age and health but she's starting to get used to the idea. The rest of us look at this as extremely positive as we can't have this happen to her again. She is too special to all of us.

This morning came as quite a shock. The AICD solution wasn't surprising. It was more how quickly it all came about. She is in surgery right now as I write this, so please send your good thoughts and prayers one more time to help her get through this final surgery and recovery period. If everything goes as planned she should be able to come home in couple of days, thank heaven.

At the end of the today, she'll have climbed the mountain, reached the top and will now start her decent back to her life again with all of us. She still has a ways to go but it all looking very positive. There are a lot of things that had to happen for her to be in the situation she is in today. We are all very lucky and blessed.

For those that are interested in sending Jill a message, we started taking a laptop to her at the hospital so she can read the blog posts and the comments from all of you. Funny enough, Jill needs to read it too as she doesn't remember much of what happened that day or any of the first few days she was in the hospital. Also, she will likely be able to see visitors soon as well. Due to the outpouring of support from everyone, we'll have to figure out a gradual way for people to come see her. She still needs a lot of rest so we'll get the stealth team back together and figure out how to make it work.