Hospital Update - 10

We saw our family doctor this afternoon.

Lungs -- The bad part of Maggie's left lung is still not too good. She was given strict instructions to continue using the spirometer for breathing exercise -- either at every commercial break on tv, or every hour if she's reading or watching taped videos.

Swelling -- She has a hemotoma at the site of the incision for the bypass machine. Doctor says that, for adult catheterizations, they will usually put a sandbag on the incision site for three hours following the procedure, to keep the swelling down. There's nothing to be done for this. Time will resolve it. Maggie could use cool compresses, but the doctor says that the chill on that part of the body may be less welcome than is the swelling.

Rash -- Doctor says it's benign. She showed me that, if you press down on the skin or if you gently stretch and pull at the skin, the spots go away. They come right back when you quit pressing. But she said that a rash that goes away like that is benign. So it's not pox.

Doctor tested for strep. The rash fit, but nothing else did. The strep test was negative. We reviewed possibilities for allergic reactions to something external, and that just doesn't pan out. So we're left with the conclusion that it must be an allergic reaction to the prophylactic antibiotics given before and after surgery. I think she got ampicillin and oxycillin. We have a call in to cardiology to confirm which meds she got, and to put them on a No-No List for Maggie henceforth. After discussing this, I recalled that Maggie didn't get any -cillins with her last open-heart. She'd had some tummy reactions to penicillin previously, and developed a nasty nasty diaper rash. So last time we told them not to use -cillins. We figured it would be too hard to treat the diaper rash alongside the recovery from surgery. She did have -cillin with her palate surgery, but it was one dose instead of a couple days of IV's. But now, we're just going to have to keep her away from it for good and forever. For now, we will just be treating the rash with Benadryl until it goes away. No biggie. Doctor said it shouldn't take long, since we're not continuing to put the offending drug into Maggie's system.

Sternum incision and chest-tube sites are healing fabulously.