Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.  ~Charles Dickens

We can’t go home yet. Last night was another hard night, more blood pressure scares as they tried unsuccessfully to rein in her rising hypertension. There were some moments of true fear where, when upset, Zoe’s BP rose to 180 and 190 systolic. Normal adult is around 120, normal infant… under 100.

It took the introduction of another new IV medication to bring her down, and by 2am or so she was holding steady around 124, a dramatic improvement over the past day. Today she was down to 119 or so, a reasonable number given that there is an expectation that her BP will be high due to the steroids. From what we understand from Dr. B, the longer a person is on steroids the worse the side effects become, and we’re definitely seeing that. Luckily the dosage of Dexamethasone was reduced by half, and we should start seeing some improvements. What we have seen today could be a result of that reduction.

That was the bad news. The good news is that Zoe’s kidneys seem to be functioning normally (hypertension often has renal causes from what I gather), her heart looks good, and there were no bad indicators or causes for worry on her EKG, ECG, or ultrasound tests that she’s had in the past two days.

I’ll take it.