Thursday 13th July

As expected, Enmarie left ICU yesterday evening and moved to an ordinary ward. That's a step forward. 

I am now allowed to stay with her overnight, sleeping on the couch in her room. It's quite comfortable but there are hourly interruptions for the nurses to check Enmarie's vital signs, but I'd rather they checked than not! 

Today, the cardiologist gave Enmarie an echocardiogram, an ultrasound examination of her heart. She was found to have bacterial endocarditis, an infection of one of her heart valves. This was caused by the same bacteria which gave her pneumonia. 

The treatment for endocarditis is antibiotic injections, three times a day. The course is four weeks long but with all the antibiotics which Enmarie's already had for pneumonia they say that, if all goes well, she will need only one more week of treatment in hospital and then home for more antibiotics, in tablet form. 

Fingers crossed that they're right! 

Tomorrow, Enmarie will have an MRI to look at her lungs and heart in detail and make sure that nothing nasty is still lurking there.