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no bad news is good news

The doctors at Suburban decided to transfer Carmen to Johns Hopkins, and oh what a transfer it was--her ambulance got a flat tire, and her backup ambulance got lost so 2 hours after leaving Suburban she finally arrived at 5am at Hopkins.

At Suburban they suspected an infection, but after a CT scan saw that the tumors were slightly compressing the inferior vena cava, which became the prime suspect of the fluid retention. If this was the case they would put in a stent to help keep the vein open. But, luckily the medical oncologists at Hopkins decided to do a scan of the legs to see if anything else was going on.  The scan showed that she has two blood clots one in each of her legs. So, the doctors have decided to do a de-blood-clotting procedure, where they stick a catheter in each of the affected veins and introduce a medicine that will dissolve the clots. Unfortunately, she will have to be in the ICU after this procedure to monitor the effects of the blood thinner closely. Hopefully this procedure will go well, and by tomorrow she feels better.

Tom and I are heading up to hang out with Carmen and Jose before the procedure and to sit around the ICU's waiting room. So even though there are risks associated with this procedure, the good news is that her liver and kidneys are function just fine.

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but I am STILL HERE!" - Carmen Today was another crazy day for Carmen, you know to keep things interesting. The radiologists looked at the ultrasound, and based on that thought that perhaps it wasn't blood clots but the compression of the inferior vena cava instead. So they did a venogram to look at the veins to verify the presence of the blood clots. As it turned out, there were no blood clots, and the fluid retention was based on the compression of the lower vena cava. The doctors put in 2 or 3 stents to reinforce the vein that was nearly completely compressed by the tumors, which took quite some time because of a minor hiccup. The second stent only half deployed, but was attached to the stent above it, and so they had to hold the top stent from above as they pulled the lower stent to fully open it. (To all my future doctor friends--I can't believe you are going to be doing crazy on the spot stuff like this. You guys are awesome!) Because Carmen was actually half con...