So Friday night, May 30th, was stressful. Because of the effusion around the heart, they gave him a huge dose of IV diuretic, which caused him to go low in Potassium. This caused his PVCs to be erratic all night and the monitor kept giving warnings. Because I told the nurse it was doing this, they checked his blood for potassium levels and saw it was low. They gave him potassium, but he still kept having elevated PVCs. They rechecked his blood at 4:00 am and it was still low, so they gave him more potassium. By morning his PVCs stayed normal. I think I got about two hours of sleep that night. The echo tech finally came around 10:30. The tech told us she had looked at the previous echo and the effusion had gotten smaller. This means fluid was being drawn to the heart and the diuretic was working to remove it. It confirmed that it was not blood. So, after the team looked at everything, Joni came by with all his discharge papers! Jason was ecstatic and we headed home. We got home around 5 pm and family and friends had decorated the house with balloons, streamers and a homemade Welcome Back Home banner the kids had made with the Sprinkles. It was sweet! My mom even brought pizza over!
He's been going to the mall each day to walk a little. Yesterday he had his blood work done and this morning Shands called. INR is 2.4, which means it's good and he doesn't have to give himself the injections. His potassium is 4.4, so that's good too. So retest blood Thursday to make sure they aren't continuing to go up. He's definitely bruising more easily now :( Hopefully we can lower the dose in 3 months since this valve can be on low dose Coumadin. He will only need to maintain his INR at 1.8 - 2.8 at that point. Then hopefully in 6 months to a year, he can be on no Coumadin and just be on aspirin and Plavix.
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