First, in case you missed it on facebook, my Covid test was negative. yay!!! Mom was able to spend the afternoon with me. It was so good that Mom could be here today after spending all day yesterday in isolation until my covid test resulted.

The past 24 hours have been very tough. Saturday night into Sunday was a very long night with lots of pain and vomiting. Cardiology and the hospitalist have been working together to try to get a regimen that works to control the pain and nausea. We just adjusted the dose of both pain and nausea meds this afternoon, in the hopes that we can built some up in my system and get me some relief until we get to the Cath Lab.

Speaking of the cath lab, we are still awaiting a transfer to Fairfax. We aren’t sure what day I will be going in for the procedure. It could be as early as Monday or as late as Friday. There are some details that have to be worked out that are hard to iron out over a weekend in a hospital.

The cardiologist who was on today was also trying to lay some groundwork for apheresis, a blood filtering process that removes the Lipoprotein(a) particle that they believe is the cause of my recurrent issues. It is only done at a few locations but he was hoping that if he could get the paperwork/notes written in my chart that we could get that started immediately after this Cath. In theory, apheresis would remove the particle LP(a) that is my problem and thereby greatly reduce the number of blockages (hopefully). This would be a short term solution until the trial that is about to start for an LP(a) drug, makes its way through the trial process and onto the market.

Thankfully, I have had great nurses this whole admission, who have advocated for me, kept messaging doctors until we got a response and checking with pharmacy on any medication questions. They have also gone above and beyond, bringing me a homemade blanket from the donation closet, printed out crosswords and word searches for me and taken the time to chat with me for a few minutes each time they came in.

The short and sweet version is that we are having a really hard time controlling pain, nausea and vomiting and I feel pretty crappy to be quite honest. Just to put things in perspective..just walking from the bed to the bathroom which is less than 50 feet away, causes such severe pain that I either want to vomit or do.  Thats where we are at. This isn’t another ‘oh Kristin has chest pain again admission”, this is like the wheels fell off the car and we are taking it back into the shop again for a reboot kind of admission.

Please specifically pray for the following:

• For the Cath Lab procedure to work out how/when its supposed to according to Gods Plan
• For the accepting team at Fairfax to work with me for pain/nausea control. I have had horrible experiences with the hospitalist team and this is a huge stressor for me.
• For the pain and nausea to get under control tonight so that I can get some good sleep.
• For all my doctors involved with my care.
• In gratitude that the team at Reston has been respectful of my case and its complexities and worked with me to continue to come up with a solution that works.