day 10 or 11

This is the e-mail from late last night, I haven't heard anything yet today.

I still haven’t decided if today was a good day or a bad day. Whichever it is it doesn’t seem to be ending. For most of the day we felt like we took several steps backwards.


Without warning we found out they were taking Melissa in for a detailed ultrasound this morning of her kidneys and major veins going in and out of them. They found a blood clot was flapping in a vein on the exterior of the kidney. There was quickly a concern so they did ultrasounds on each leg looking for more clots and then rushed us to angio or radiology where they decided to do a procedure to try to prevent the clot(s) from hitting her lungs and being back to square one.

They went in from her neck and put a “basket” or filter in just above the clot which broke off during the procedure and is caught in the basket blocking about 3/5 of the vein. This is where I think the day could have gone bad but was good because had the clot broken loose why in the women’s center it could have been every bit as serious as the first emboli. During this procedure they also went in from the groin to see if after the basket was in they could grab or break up the clot which turned into lots of clots. They tried and were unsuccessful at this and decided to back out because it was too risky.

This kind of put them into some further predicaments. She needed to be on blood thinner to treat the clots, but there is fear of her bleeding and her blood levels have already been low even after receiving 5 units of blood. Ultimately this is a risk they felt they had to take. So she is on blood thinner, 4 blood pressure medicines, and they are taking her blood every two hours to make sure she is not bleeding somewhere. If her blood levels start dropping we will likely end up in ICU again and have to do a special scan to find the bleed or if the bleed is vaginal they would do a hysterectomy.

If there is no bleeding we may have dodged another bullet and have slight or no more kidney trouble, probably a little blood pressure still. They will also have to do something with the basket. It is higher in the body than they usually have it. They can remove it or collapse it and lower it to a safer part of the body below the organs.

I will try to keep everyone posted as things develop in the night or tomorrow. Today we were stuck for 5 hours before I could get in a position to let anyone know that things had changed.

Boys are doing good. Maxwell was put back on oxygen, but not much flow.

Thanks for everyone’s help, support, prayers, and patience in our absence.

David G. Adams