Friday, September 22, 2006

Some bad news is so bad there is no way to prepare for it.

We learned today that Tuesday has pulminary hypertension. There are blood vessels in her body that are not expanding which is making it hard for her heart to beat and her lungs to breath. The root cause is, in her case, most likely genetic and therefore not something that can be fixed. The symptoms can be treated, they can force more air into her lungs, they can dilate her blood vessels with nitrous oxide, but they can't, for all intents and purposes, cure her. Eventually her heart and lungs will get too tired to keep working and they will fail. She could not live, ever, without a great deal of constant medical intervention. Taking into account the fact that she is guaranteed to have other problems due to her chromosomes and her future, if we decided to force her to stay alive, looked bad.

Christine and i have decided not to have the hospital intubate her or give her nitrous oxide. Intubation would only work for so long and it would keep her in bed forever. Nitrous oxide would dilate her blood vessels temporarily, which might relieve her hypertension or it might not, but that is something that she would need to receive constantly and it would not treat the underlying cause, only the syptom. It may not even make her breathing easier, since her lungs at this point are fairly worn out.

Tonight Christine and i are going to go be in the hospital with Tuesday overnight. Tomorrow we're planning on being with her all day and arranging to take her outside for a little while. We've asked the very kind and compassionate doctors and nurses to keep her comfortable.

I really can't think of anything else to say right now.