Eric had a pretty good night sleep wise. His potassium dropped significantly, so now that is in the mix with all his meds. Today will be more of getting him up and moving.
The girls and I are in the middle of our treatments in our hotel room. Just happy that we can start to tackle this problem that apparently we brought with us from Colorado. Yeah, we're those people! I spoke with Eric's ICU nurse and it seems like he will move out of the ICU this evening. Yay! His pain is managed with some additional meds and those blood gases are leveling out too. They are going to remove one of the two chest tubes, as well as the central line in his neck before being moved out of the ICU. We're all hopeful that this will make him feel more comfortable and not feel as much pain on his right side. Eric will be in the step-down unit for three to five days or more. More to come!
The aortic valve sits inside the aorta. The valve has three cusps that open to let blood out and come together to close the valve off. It's supposed to be a one way valve allowing oxygen rich blood to flow out to the body. It should then close tightly when the heart relaxes and refills. Think of it like a door. It should open wide to let everyone out, but then close tightly preventing anything from coming in. The bicuspid valve only has two cusps, often times the three cusps are present but two are fused together. With bicuspid valves, one of two things can happen (or sometimes both simultaneously). The valve can become narrow and calcified as the disease process advances, or it can become progressively leakier. Mine is very leaky. The blood goes out fine, but then leaks back in to the left ventricle causing the heart to work very hard. This results in the heart chamber getting really big and thick due to the extra work to pump a large volume of blood forward. Eventuall...
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