I don't think the first trip ever made a mention in either of our blogs. Funny how an exhausting trip tends to stem the care factor to write about it afterwards...
Anyway, Sarah was in a fair bit of pain last night when she went to bed, and despite taking 800mg of Ibuprofen, some amount of Oxycodone, and some sleeping tablets, she was up again under 2 hours later, in agony.
The main concern was that the staph infection she'd apparently had in the incision a few weeks prior hadn't been kicked fully by the antibiotics, and was coming back.
So off we trotted to Stanford's ER, getting there around 1am. Fortunately it was very quiet (not that it matters when you mention the magic words "chest pain") and Sarah got straight in.
They did the usual battery of tests and decided to keep her in for observation, so I trundled off home for some sleep at about 5am.
They told her she could go home at about 1:30pm. Apparently the problem was muscle spasms, which can happen in some people after having heart surgery (even this long after the surgery). The solution? Valium. The poor girl's going to rattle soon with all these pills.
They did some blood work and there's no sign of the staph infection. Whatever pain medication they gave Sarah intravenously today made her extremely nauseous, and she was still concerned about the state of the incision around the area that had been weeping previously, so we trekked back in to Stanford this afternoon to see the cardiologist, who wasn't concerned about the incision at all. In fact, he said the surgical doctor had been a bit generous with pronouncing a staph infection in the incision two weeks previously, saying that the swab they took at the time probably just picked it up off Sarah's skin, where it's quite common to be found. So she may never have had a staph infection in the first place.