10/23/2017 Update

First, the good news -- Julie reported this morning that she was more comfortable last night than any night since surgery.  This was encouraging to us and made us feel like we are making real progress on this clot.

Around 2:45pm this afternoon, she had a Ventricular Tachycardia heart rhythm event and hear heart raced up to 180 bpm while she was sitting in a chair.  Thankfully the nurse was able to give her some instructions, which she followed and ended the event without having to be shocked.  It was a scary 15 to 30 minutes for us while her heart was irregular and they were running emergency EKGs, etc. to find out what the cause was.  The end result was that they found that the picc line they put in yesterday to feed her into the veins was too close to the heart and interfering with the electrical signals of the heart.  They moved it out by 3cm and seems to have solved the problem.  We though we were going to go to a regular room today, but obviously that is not going to happen now.

Early this evening, the doctors came back to us and after they all reviewed all of her records and discussed they were in agreement that she needs to have a procedure done tomorrow to remove the clot.  This is not full-blown surgery because they are not cutting her open, but it is not without risks.  As we understand it they will be going into through the liver and the vein into the clot to break up and remove the clot.  We do not yet know the time of the surgery as they are working her into the schedule.  As soon as I know the time I will make that information available here.

Ben