Home at last

It was nice to wake up with Zora. Because of anxiety, she had some trouble getting to sleep. But hopefully that will get better. I least once she did get to sleep, the bedroom was dark and quiet.

We actually were awakened at 9AM by the nurse. Last night a guy brought a big box of medical supplies, drugs, and an IV stand. The nurse was very nice and showed us what to do. It’s once a day and takes about 2 hours total.

Someone will come tomorrow as well. But once we can do it on our own (it’s not too hard), a nurse will come just once a week.

Also, because I now have the images of Zora’s beating heart, you can actually see the growth. It’s a very cool program that shows many images of Zora’s heart pumping away. Not that I’m qualified to analyze it, but here it is. The little arrow is pointing at the vegetal growth. It’s just under 10mm long.


What you’re looking at is the left atrium (top) and the left ventricle (middle of bottom). The mitral valve is the horizontal band in the center. There is a left and right “leaf” to it. They meet in the center, close up, and prevent backflow (when they’re working right).

In the second picture is a moment later, the valve is starting to open, the growth starts to flop around a bit.




In the third picture, the valve is open, and the growth isn’t visible.


Watching the frames in live action, the growth most resembles a guy trying to hold on to a bunking bronco, hand waving, with hat in hand. Hold on tight, cowboy!

These images are from a few days ago. Hopefully things get a little better everyday. As my friend Jenny, the doctor, puts it, as Zora has been on antibiotics for almost two weeks, the growth coming off becomes “increasingly unlikely…—think of it like a cut—when it first heals, the scab is really friable and breaks easily but as it becomes more like scar tissue, it becomes less friable.”