Some good news, some bad news.

As long as I've known my wife, she's never been wrong. About anything. I'm serious about this. She has a 6th sense about literally everything. She's right about what restaurant we should go to, whether or not to wear 3D glasses at the movies with Landon (DON'T DO IT!), what car we should get, what house we should live it, whether I should go camping this weekend, and most of all she's ALWAYS right about Nathan. It doesn't matter what my opinion is, she is literally right, every...single...time. I should stop making decisions and ask her whether or not I should breathe in the morning. Whenever I go against her gut feeling things turn out bad. If the doctors knew what I knew about Jessica they would never question a single word she says about Nathan. I've been tracking these things for his entire life. Jessica says we should go down on the diuretics, doctors disagree, something bad happens and the doctors end up going down on the diuretics the next day. Jessica says she doesn't like milrinone, amiodarone, fentanyl, all end up being terrible for him. Jessica argues that the new dose of his BP med will increase his potassium. The next day they have to emergently switch his BP med because the doc blew her off and his potassium is sky high. I could literally go on forever and meanwhile she gets no credit. She is the best mom/nurse in the world. I believe everything she says, because as far as Nathan is concerned she's NEVER been wrong. OK rant over.

Yesterday Jessica was so worried about Nathan yesterday that she paged a doctor to come take a look at him knowing full well that the doctor was in the room of a critical patient. That's how worried she was. She never does this, ever. The doctor blew her off like she was some crazy mom who was overreacting. If he only knew Jessica the way I know her, he would have taken her seriously. So, Nathan is doing a little worse today. His HR is still low. At the end of the day he started struggling to breathe so they had to put him on a high amount of oxygen support. So now that the doctors have waited long enough where he's actually showing serious signs that there is something wrong they are finally concerned.

OK, the good things. They did an echo today and it was essentially unchanged since the last echo we saw 21 days ago. His pulmonary valve they replaced is still leaking the same amount but nothing has gotten any worse. They gave him a blood transfusion because his hemoglobin levels were low. He always does better after a blood transfusion. His HR was slightly better today than it was yesterday. When he was sleeping it was in the 50s and awake it was in the 80s. Yesterday it was 40s to 60s. After scoffing at Jessica's request for labs yesterday, they've decided to draw up a bunch of cultures to see if he has an infection and they have started him on a bunch of antibiotics.

This whole thing is scary. Nathan just doesn't recover well from surgery. It took him months before he was himself again after his last one. I'm hoping this is just a temporary step back with a simple solution and that he'll be himself again in a couple of days. I pray every night for a break. Nathan and Jessica both need a break. We need him to heal and we need to have our family back together. That's it for now. There's always tomorrow and I'm always optimistic.

Aaron