Chest Tube Troubles

Not much has changed today as far as medication goes except that she is on the insulin drip again instead of getting shots. However, the tube they put in Jenni's chest yesterday to help reinflate her lung has clogged (the blood clotted inside it and stopped it up). They aren't sure what to do about it. They mentioned leaving it as is, taking the whole line out, or just trying to remove the clot. It depends on the results of the CT scan that they should have completed during the 2:00 to 4:30 "no visitors" time. It is clear that while the tube is clotted, no more fluid can be drained. However, the clotting may be preventing the lung from bleeding into the chest cavity. Hopefully I'll have good news when I get a chance to post again. I wish I knew whether this was good or bad news. It sounds bad, but if there is a possibility of an upside I am grateful for that.

Another Little Scare

I was sitting in the room with Jenni just a few moments ago, typing some responses to questions about the blog, when her oxygen levels just randomly dropped. The nurse came in almost immediately, rechecked her stats, raised her oxygen to 80%, and called for the doctor. By the time the doctor made it to the room, her oxygen level had stabilized and she was asking what happened. She didn't even realize she was breathing with any more difficulty.
Three doctors came in (one was Dr. Chute, the others I'm not sure) and checked her out. They couldn't discern what caused the drop, but suggested that your body naturally fluctuates some and that it was probably natural. However, (and this is why I like Dr. Chute so much), even though he talked like it was probably perfectly fine, he still called in a specialist to come see her and is going to order a CT scan. I don't know how quickly either of those will happen, but it makes me feel better that even though he thinks things are probably okay, he's staying on top of things just in case they aren't.

Right now, other than her oxygen being at 80% instead of 60%, she looks and sounds like nothing is any different. The lung specialist just said that he was going to add an inhaler to her treatments (the name just slipped my mind; I'll have to fix this later). It should help with the lungs as well. He also said that he would step down her oxygen from 80% back to 60% in small steps this evening, so this was probably just a false alarm even if it did scare the mess out of me.

I'll keep going with the FAQ and I'll keep updating as I learn new things.