Duke 2012 – Day 0

As most of you have heard or read by now, we will be going back to Duke tomorrow (1/4/12) for Tami to be admitted. We were there last week for a visit with her cardiologist – a regularly scheduled appointment, but more urgent because she hasn’t felt her best for a couple of months now. She has had some shortness of breath, a dry cough, and some steady weight gain, all symptoms of a flare-up of her congestive heart failure. Normally her symptoms, especially the water retention that is evidenced by the steady weight gain, is managed with an additional diuretic pill (metolazone, if you want the medical details ) a couple of times a week, but that has been ineffective recently. So, after a new diuretic that they gave her to try for the past few days (torsemide, along with metolazone) also hasn’t had much effect (in terms of weight loss, usually a good indicator), they told her today that they’d like her to come back and be admitted. They told us last week that that would be the next step. In fact, her cardiologist here in Florence recommended that a couple of weeks ago, but we wanted to get the Duke doctors’ opinion first. So, we are going with two things in mind: first, IV diuretics (furosemide (Lasix) based on past experience) to get rid of the fluid that she seems to be retaining, and, second, a right heart catheterization to see how her heart is working. This procedure, which she has had before in October 2008, is the best way to see how well her heart is functioning and whether anything has changed in her heart’s condition since 2008. (Yes, for those of you following along, it has been over 3 years since we were at Duke being told first that Tami needed to be put on the heart transplant list and, then, that she couldn’t be on the transplant list. God is good for providing over 3 years since that time without significant deterioration of Tami’s heart function as far as we know!) So, we will get there tomorrow, go on IV furosemide, go on IV heparin to manage her anti-coagulation (“blood-thinning”) while she comes off of her warfarin (Coumadin), probably sit around doing the same on Thursday (it’s about 2 days to get off and 2 days to get back on the Coumadin from past experience), probably have the heart cath on Friday, if all goes well, then sit around some more for the weekend and see what Monday holds. That’s a long 5 days or so, so keep us in your prayers. And stay tuned to the blog for daily (or more frequent) updates.

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