back in the waiting room...

Because Barb is back in the operating room. But not as much this time. It's better than it could be.

They did do the CT scan and find blood clots -- actually, they termed it one single blood clot, running from her knees to her liver in a contiguous mass in her vein system, which is kinda big. There are two ways to deal with a blood clot like that -- you can feed a person anticoagulants, so her blood won't clot at all, and the clot will dissolve, or you can whack it with a hammer and break it up yourself. Sparing no expense, the doctors here decided to do both.

They started her on Heparin right away, which would prevent the clot from growing further. They then made preparations, and just now brought her into the arthroscopic surgery room. (I may not have spelled that right. I don't feel bad about it.) The procedure, which poses minimal danger, is to send a little robot scopey guy, named Albert, up the veins in the back of her knees. The robot has two tools attached, a high-pressure water gun and a vacuum cleaner. He will find the lower end of the clot, blast it with his gun to dissolve it, then vacuum up the dissolved bits. He will then continue up the vein, and repeat, until he has made his little robot way up to her liver, by which time he will have opened a pathway up for blood flow.

I am told that this description, while easy enough for me to understand, is not exactly technically accurate (e.g., the robot's name is actually Mortimer). However, it is correct in substance, and it will do as far as I'm concerned. The procedure, they assured us, is extremely safe. The more dangerous part comes afterwards, when they put her on blood thinners and anti-coagulants for a few months. They plan to monitor her for clot progress (the remnants of it should diminish over time without further intervention) and keep her on blood thinners until they can't find clot anymore.

Good news? Her liver's working great. Her kidneys are working great. She's put on a lot of weight through swelling, but it's all water and should go away quickly once circulation is restored. The operation today will leave at most two external wounds, punctures in the skin which can be repaired by a simple band-aid -- only a few millimeters in size. Things aren't too bad, and there are a lot of silver linings in sight.

But man, all these new clouds rolling in sure is starting to get old. We'll update as we can. Think positive thoughts.