Not much change in Laura’s condition. There also isn’t a positive diagnosis yet. The doctor I talked to sounded about 100% sure that whatever is causing her breathing to fail is NOT related to the shingles, however. Here is what has changed:

1) They put a larger tube in, so she can breathe better. She was having problems with the other respirator tube, because it was too small. Her oxygen saturation level has maintained the same, which is to say it is good, hanging between 96% and 100% about all the time.

2) She is heavily sedated. So much so, she is basically asleep all of the time and unaware of all this horrible shit that she is going through. I am very pleased with this. When I went in early yesterday, she was awake and extremely aggitated with the whole situation. She was on a lot of sedation medicine then, and because of the tube, she had to write on a pad of paper to communicate. By the time I got in there, she was awake and trying to communicate, but was so uncoordinated because of the medicine, her writing just looked like scribbles. I could read a few things which included “I need to live in a bubble” and “no more dog in the room”. She was very irritated, and fidgity which was causing her oxygen to drop. So they increased the sedation medicine and she is out of it now. Again, this is good. She just wouldn’t relax, and ugg… I can’t even imagine how terrible it would be to have that tube going down my throat into my lungs. She had to be terribly uncomfortable.

3) Her mother is in town, so I am back at work unless they need me at the hospital.

4) The doctors said their test results should be in today, which means they should be able to treat the problem specifically. So far they have been running regimines of antibiotics, etc, to try to treat general and broad range problems. It is hard to tell if this has been working or not. They talked a lot about weening her off the tubes, but I am doubting that will happen for at least a few days, depending on how things go. I should get something of an update from her mother in a few hours.

Other than that, I managed to sort of sleep last night. I, needless to say, haven’t been sleeping at all lately. I haven’t been sleeping correctly for months, but the last week has been exceptionally bad.

I am still extremely worried about her condition and the doctors are speaking in a lot of “ifs” and “maybes”. My brain is telling me that she is really being very well taken care of and that realistically, she should get through this, although it could take another week or two. But, my heart is terribly afraid. I’m feeling a little more confident that this isn’t viral, which is good. Part of what the doctors are focusing on is her previous radiation and chemo treatments, and the damage they caused to her lungs. Plus, the tumor is still there. Sure, it is relatively smaller than pre-BMT, but it still is hurting her breathing capacity. The thing hurting her most now is treatments she has received previously, vs whatever new ailment she has aquired. So, we will see. She really does have a team of doctors who are fantastic and very invested in her well being, so there is a lot of hope. I’ll try to keep you update.

Also, thanks for the emails. I apologize if I can’t reply to them all. But, your thoughts are definitely appreciated.