Rebekah had to be checked in at the hospital at 7:15 this morning. We were up and at the hospital in plenty of time. Rebekah could not have anything by mouth after 3:00 am, but she was happy when we checked in and didn't seem to be hungry. After checking in, we went up to the same-day surgery room to wait for our turn.
We knew before today that Rebekah would be second case in the cath lab. What we did not anticipate was having to wait for so long! The first case did not get taken into the lab until 8:00, and by this time, Rebekah was starting to get hungry. Our nurse gave us permission to feed Rebekah some Pedialyte, so we gave that to her between 8:30 and 9:00. I am so thankful we were able to let her have that! As it turned out, the case before us had some problems and the doctors took much longer than they had anticipated before they finished that case. Rebekah was not taken back to the cath lab until almost 2:30 this afternoon.
The first item on the agenda was the bronchoscopy. This is the procedure that Rebekah's pulmonologist wanted to have done to check Rebekah's trachea and bronchial airways for tracheomalacia (underdeveloped cartilage in the trachea and/or airways). The thought was that if Rebekah had tracheomalacia, it would explain some of her wheezing and respiratory problems and why she does not respond to the inhaled medications like the doctors think she should. The bronchoscopy was done rather quickly and the ENT came back to talk to us around 3:00. He could find no areas of tracheomalacia and said that from an anatomical perspective, everything looks fine. His recommendation is to have a swallow study done tomorrow to check for possible aspiration. If you remember, Rebekah had three swallow studies done during her first month at MUSC, so this is nothing new to us. The ENT did say that it would be unusual for her to begin aspirating again after having done well for several months, but he has seen it before. If there is a way to be unusual, Bekah probably will find it! :) We aren't sure yet what time tomorrow that will be, but it is going to be put on the schedule.
The second item on Rebekah's cath lab schedule was a sedated echocardiogram. She has echos done once a month or so at the cardiologist's office, but the chances of her laying perfectly still through the whole procedure are non-existant. So while she was already going to be sedated, the doctors wanted to get some really good pictures from the echo. We received a page just a few minutes after 4:00 that the echo was done and they were beginning the catheterization.
So, that brings us up to date on Rebekah's progress. It will likely be close to 6:00 before she is done with the catheterization and she most likely will be moved to the PCICU for recovery. She will definitely be staying overnight and will have a swallow study done some time tomorrow. We will post again when we have more information!
Thank you for all of your prayers, comments, Facebook posts and texts. We love you all!
Nancy
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