Very bad but stable

Denise is very bad off, but stable. There were so many procedures done today, I can't begin to remember remember them all. At one point this morning, the doctor said that her ejection fraction (how much blood can pump out of the heart) is so low that if her heart stopped, he didn't know if it could get going again. This flashed through my head: Last night there was a "code blue" for another patient as I was leaving the CCU. As I walked by, I saw people trying chest compressions on him. I found out later that night that he passed away, in spite of everyone's best efforts (the best effort being the norm in the CCU). I really don't want to leave Denise. But on the other hand, though I'm in no way squeamish, I hope I'm never in a position to see anyone working on Denise like that. Anyway, I told the doctor to do his best if the heart stopped, that we know everyone's been doing everything they can, and Denise is a fighter and she'll do her part to keep going. He & the team have been calling shots in such a way that Denise has come through some pretty bad scrapes already. After having turned the corner in a few ways, I feel like we're back at square one again.
I'm still trying to talk to Denise without cracking, telling her that she's come through a lot so far as a result of the medical team & what's available to them, her strength to fight this, and of course a whole lot of prayer. It's getting really hard to see her condition and find the positives to point out so she doesn't lose heart. I acknowledged that she's scared & admitted that lots of us have been scared sometimes. I've been avoiding it, but finally told her that even if she does die, our faith gives us hope for life beyond our time on earth. I told her that I wasn't strong enough to pick a woman to marry that didn't share the same faith I do; I couldn't stand the thought of life on earth with her being all there is, and when we're both done here, there's still heaven. I hope I didn't stress her, and I hope I didn't say the wrong things. But there was no way I could ignore that she's scared. Now I was a big chicken about all this, talking to her while she was too tired to open her eyes & look at me. By the way, she did move her arms & legs during the procedures, and she has move a little bit late this afternoon. She's opened her eyes a couple times.
Xigris has been started again to try to pull her out of sepsis. There are significant risks involved, as she also has DIC (simplified: bleeding/clotting problems) right now, and the Xigris combined with the bleeding makes for pretty bad news. But the alternative is to let the sepsis continue, shutting down her organs until she dies. So as the doctor put it, it's been nothing but full-court press this whole time, and so it continues. We don't want any bleeding problems to complicate things.
There are so many other things wrong, I can't remember them all. Fortunately, my R.N. aunt that's been explaining most of these things to me is visiting and she's going to talk to the doctors to find out what all's transpired since last night. That'll be in a future post. For that matter, my folks and a bunch of friends have rallied around us late last night & all day today.
Things that have gone positively:
The dialysis went well and lowered the demand on her breathing, so her breathing rate is approaching normal. The fact that she's "well" enough to tolerate dialysis is a good. I assume that since they can perform dialysis, there may not be the problem of her lungs filling with fluid that we had a few weeks ago. Her massive dose of blood pressure medicine was lowered about 40% and her blood pressure was still acceptable. I hope my understanding of that is correct. We'd like to see many more things go in a good direction.

Tonight I told Denise that we didn't need any excitement. I want the nurse to have a nice uneventful evening. Wouldn't that be nice if all the other nurses got jealous of Denise's nurse because there was nothing for her to do but sit & watch Denise get a little bit better tonight?

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