Having beaten the bacteria infection with the antibiotics, she's now ready to have a new pacemaker installed, so she was transferred back to the main hospital building.
However, there was one question: does she really need it? Although she blacked out after the first day or two because her heart paused for a few seconds, she's had no problems since then. A new pacemaker wouldn't hurt, but there hadn't been any indication since then that it she needed it. Her heart may be a little slower than most, but otherwise it works fine.
She'd gotten a second opinion about the installation from her internal generalist at the CCH; he believes that it would not necessarily help, so she's reluctant to have it installed. Although I'm inclined to play it a bit safer, SY wants to have some more wait-and-see time. If she has any issues, she'll consent to having the replacement pacemaker; if not, we just go on with life.
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Well, that was as things stood on the 2nd. That night, her heartbeats/minute got down into the 20s while she was sleeping, requiring that she be woken up and stimulated to get her heartbeat back up.
So yes, she will need to have the pacemaker put back in.
As if that weren't enough bad news for the day, it turns out that there are remnants of [what they thought were] bacterial emboli in her lungs causing pleural fluid to build up again. This will require her to get a thoracentesis (a needle through the back into the lung) of her other lung.
And of course she'll need to sit in the Continuing Care Hospital some more and wait for the antibiotics to take effect.
:-( *sigh*
The good news is that she has plenty enough goodies to keep her going.
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By the 5th, they'd figured out that the pleural fluid was not infected, meaning that her lungs are fine and the infection is finally dealt with. Right now, we're waiting for the infectious diseases people to get a warm fuzzy so we can proceed with the hospital visit.
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