Day 6: Status: still critical

I know our posts lately have been pretty happy, but our mom is still in critical condition. She will definitely be intubated until at least sometime tomorrow. They took her off of her sedation and her pain meds completely when they let her try breathing on her own. She was able to open her eyes and look at us, but she can't move her arms or legs for us when we ask her to. We think she's in a lot of pain, because she was grimacing and gagging on the tube. Thankfully, they put her back on some pain medication and she seems to be resting a little better.

Positive news:

• Her EF is 55% now, up from 35% on Friday. (effectiveness of her heart pumping, this is in the  "normal" range now)
• She was able to breath on her own for almost 4 hours, they put her back on the vent to let her rest
• They're feeding her
• She was able to look at me when I talked to her, then look at Christy when she talked to her
• They are having therapy come up here to start moving her arms to get her moving again
• Still taking fluids off of her and she's looking way better

Right now, the concerns are:

• Her hands and feet: her fingertips, nails, and toes on the right side are the worst - they're almost black, we still aren't sure if she'll lose any of them
• She has a lot of blisters all over her skin, they need to have a wound care doctor come in to take a look at them and other places where she has a lot of bleeding
• White blood cell count doubled since yesterday, they're trying to figure out why this is happening
• Her platelets are still really low
• They need to do an ultrasound on her lungs to see if there's too much fluid around them and might need to do a thoracentesis, but they can't do this until her platelets are at 50 or higher.
• She needs an ultrasound on her arms to check for clots
• She needs a cat scan to check her chest and abdomen 
• They're concerned about the placement of her nephrostomy tube, they're not getting much out of her kidney anymore
• She is still on continuous dialysis and they need to try to switch her over to a more standard dialysis machine (4 hours every other day)
• Still not making any urine

She is still in very critical condition and not out of the woods by any means. Yes, we've had a lot of positive progress, but it's still a very scary situation. It's so much harder for us now, trying to comfort our mother while she's struggling and panicking with the tube in her throat, gagging. We know she's confused and in a lot of pain.

Please keep positive energy coming our way!! Thank you so much for your continued thoughts and prayers, we appreciate every one of you.