yin and yang

Had a long chat with cardiology today about their plan to get Molly out of here. It involves slow moves and lots of patience—two things I'm really bad at.

Yesterday was a good day for Molly. Towards the end she even started eating better and we were hopeful for a good night. Ah hope. So cruel. Molly's blood pressure dropped, leading them to give her some fluids. Remember how she was super wet before? Well now she's super dry. The pendulum of medication has swung its ugly head again. Too many diuretics. I ran into one of our old nurses, Cailla, this morning and told her what happened. She said that I told her that would happen last week. Ha. But they didn't want to cut her off too soon and have Molly go back to being wet, which was a MUCH worse situation.

While it was a good day, her night was much worse. And poor Brian had night duty again, further proving that he always gets her on bad nights. She (and he) slept only a few hours. We're hoping that with more fluids working their magic inside her and getting her more sleep today that she will rebound. Fortunately our nurse today is helping us. Michelle's philosophy (and one she teaches her nursing students) is "Never wake a sleeping baby. Their temperature can wait."

So they are stepping down on her diuretics today and seeing how she tolerates it. If she does well, they will give her a test dose of enalipril tomorrow. If she tolerates the test doses, they will begin the wean from milrinone to enalipril. The steps forward are lovely. I'm getting tired of the steps back. I don't know how the docs can stand dealing with this crap all the time.

While talking to Dr Jayakumar today (cardiologist), I realized that I'm a rabbit in the turtleness of medicine. So I'm going to try to channel my inner yang as much as possible for the rest of this trip. Wish me luck.