It's a success!!

We're waiting for Mom to come back to our room. Her procedures were a SUCCESS!! They did a TEE, followed by a shock of the heart (still don't know what that is called). We saw Dr. Rich at 9:30. He came out to visit with us. He said that her creatinine has dropped to 3.5. The kidneys did very well during the procedures. He felt that she could easily go home tomorrow, and in fact has already written out her discharge orders with her medications. She will be taking Lasix (furosemide) two times a day...once in the early AM and once in the early afternoon so that she can sleep better at night. We will need to watch her sodium intake to keep her kidneys on their recovery.
While we were finishing talking to Dr. Rich, Dr. ElHaddi (the one who did her procedures) came out. He also reported that things went very well. They used a minimal sedation and she came through very well. She was easily arousable and he was impressed that when he asked her to say something, she said, "Something". He felt that her sassy comment showed good sign of cognitive coherence.
She converted with one shock (he doesn't believe in doing intermediate shocks, but just get the thing done once) and it worked. He set her pacemaker up to 70 to allow her heart more of a chance to keep in sinus rhythm since it doesn't drop as low. He was happy with her kidney improvement, although he was hoping for a more dramatic improvement in the fluid around her lungs from the chest x-ray, but felt that it was a moderate improvement. We asked what we needed to do to keep her heart in sinus (regular) rhythm, and he said the amioderone that she is taking is supposed to do that, but he also indicated that with chronic a-fib, it's hard to keep it in sinus rhythm. He said that A-fib is the "crabgrass" of cardiology, so it's something they fight on a constant basis. We asked about her tremors in her hands that she has developed over the past few days. Earlier indications were that it might be medication, like from her amioderone or possibly a combo of the amioderone and the levequin (her antibiotic for her bladder infection), but this morning was her last dose of the levequin, and she has to keep taking the amioderone, so if the combo was the cause, it will go away after today. If it's the amioderone, she may have to live with it, because she will HAVE to have the amioderone.
That's the word from St. Mark's. I went down to ICU waiting room and Kyle joined me. He was there when the doctors came, which was really nice. Curt came up and stayed in the room. We didn't want any of the nurses to get the idea that they could take this room over if at all possible, which they tried to do while Curt was here, but Curt assured them that Mom WAS coming back and the nurse, Liz, concurred.
So we are looking forward to a good and restful day with everything continuing to improve. Then we are going home tomorrow!! Good news indeed!