Heidi Complications!!!

We got home from the hospital and everything looked like it was going ok, then on the 21st, Heidi got really short of breath.

We went to the health center on the 22nd, and they thought that she had pneumonia, and gave her antibiotics. That diagnoses made sense because she had an elevated white blood cell count, and her x-rays showed water on her lungs. But strangely her legs were also swelling up.

Then her lab blood work came back and indicated that she had a lot of clotting going on. If she had blood clots that could explain both the lungs and swelling in her legs. That could be dangerous, so to be sure, they sent us over to the imaging center, and they did a cat scan of her lungs and an ultrasound of her legs. No clots. The clotting blood result was likely due to normal postpartum clotting. Well, that made us feel better, but the 22nd was a LONG day. From the cat scan, the doctor diagnosed her with a pulmonary edema and "multiple effusions," which is just a fancy way of saying that she had water on her lungs and chest cavity. He suggested she go to the emergency room, but after we called our Dr. at the health center, we decided against it, she was already on some medication to remove the water from her lungs, and we decided to see how that did before we went to the emergency room. Plus, it was late at night, and we thought that Heidi might do better with some sleep.

The medicine did make her feel better for a day or so, but then it got harder and harder to breath again.

We toughed it out over Christmas until the 27th when urgent care finally opened at BYU. We saw Dr. Willmore, who did some tests, and then sent her to the emergency room for an echo cardiogram. When we got to the emergency room, the doctor at the ER said that he hadn't herd about Heidi coming over (turns out that the ER doctor that Dr. Willmore had spoken to went on break.... figures). We ended up spending all day at the ER while they re-ran a bunch of tests and wasted a bunch of time. Finally they gave her the echo cardiogram that we came for and guess what? Heidi has postpartum cardiomyopathy, which is a fancy way of saying that she has a type of heart failure that can be rarely brought on by pregnancy :-o.

Luckily they think that she should recover, and we are keeping our fingers crossed. She spent the next few days (until this morning) in the hospital while they removed the water from her lungs, and they have given her medicine to begin to strengthen her heart. They say that they just treat her like an 80 year old with heart failure, except that they expect her to recover.

She is now home and on a water restricted and low salt diet, with a TON of pills.

So it has been a wonderful (with the birth of Samuel), but stressful (with the birth of Samuel and Heidi's complications) few weeks at the Carroll household.

Your prayers are appreciated.