Today Hana had her CT Scan and Angiogram. The preliminary results of the CT scan show her Left Atrium pressing on her left bronchus, which is what is causing the occlusion. Her left ventricle looks one centimeter bigger than the CT scan she had in February, which is a significant change. Basically, Hana’s heart is preventing air from entering her left lung.
Tomorrow they will try to extubate anyway. When they do rounds here there is often 15 people standing around participating. There is a lot of smart people in the room. Today the debate was about extubating despite her left lung bring collapsed. The theory is that she came in that way and was able to compensate, the breathing tube has not helped her (although perhaps it did help her ride out the worst of the rhinovirus), so why not give her a chance without the breathing tube again. Actually, it wasn’t much of a debate and everyone seemed to agree that it was worth a shot. Yes, this makes me very nervous, but I also agree that trying to live without a breathing tube, if possible, would be better.
I didn’t get to talk more with the heart failure transplant team about how this may affect how Hana is classified when placed on the transplant list. Today we had to meet with a handful of people as part of the transplant evaluation process. The team could decide to list Hana as early as Friday, which means she could be placed on the list as early as next week. They did say that one time they placed a child on the list a 5pm at night and the next morning they were going into surgery for a heart transplant.
Today we are all pretty tired. Hana is such a trooper. We need your positive thoughts and prayers so much right now. Then you so much for all your support. It really does bring us comfort!
Hana's Heart 