Today has been one busy day for dad and I unfortunately really do not have any crazy stories from last night. The waiting room was busy once again, and instead of attending what sounded more like a monster truck rally than a hospital waiting room. I heard entirely too much about acid reflux than I wanted to from a new houseguest. I then decided to attend the luscious resort downstairs again. I happened to wake up around 5 this morning to the snickering of what sounded like three girls (two nurses and Quincy). They had a plan to put a Depends (diaper) on me and do something with a large syringe that is typically used for fluids. I’m assuming they were going to give me a wet diaper, but they were unsuccessful.
As I made my way upstairs to see dad and Chris who had spent the night in the room, I found out that he was scheduled or a CT scan and was being moved right at that time, there was also a schedule for a picc line, an abdominal ultrasound, and a echocardiogram. The picc line was placed in his right arm and it replaced the central line in his neck. The central line has been in for a week, and is a common sight for an infection. Although they didn’t feel it was infected, he did have a fever and because of the time it was in, it was best to have it replaced. Basically the point of the lines is to make an easy access for the mass amounts of medications he receives.
The abdominal ultrasound was taken to take a look at the bowels and see if there are any blockages or any obvious concerns. A portion of good news for the day is that we finally had some signs his bowels are working (thankfully I wasn’t in the room at the time). We’ve been concerned with the bowels, so we haven’t been using tube feeding but we did start it back recently because he did have active bowel sounds. I believe this now means we can stop the Gatorade IV and increase the amount of tube feeding.
I spoke with the kidney doctor today in the hall and he said he’s pleased with the progress of his kidneys and feels as if he doesn’t have to see him much anymore, because they’re starting to function properly. The kidneys are typically the last organ to come back after an insult like they experienced, and from the way the heart doctor sounded, they would never work again after his last episode. We’re thankful that this has not been the case with us and that dad fought enough to get these to start functioning again.
The CT scan results came back and it appears that there was some sort of an infarct to his corpus callosum. An infarct is a small area of dead tissue due to a lack of blood supply. The corpus callosum is an area in the brain that connects the right and left sides and allows them to communicate. A neuro doctor came in for a consult and with his evaluation of the CT scan he feels like it’s not big enough to be concerned with. We are planning on getting a couple different opinions to make sure nothing was missed, and that they feel the same way. The hospital that we are at now isn’t really a big neuro hospital and it’s not that we don’t trust this one, but usually I’m the only one who is always right.
This will be our third echocardiogram (echo) and they are used to determine the ejection fraction of the heart. The last time it was tested it was in conjunction with the balloon pump and was 45 – 50%. The doctor was very pleased with those results, but they reported it could be skewed because of the pump.
Being the wonderful son that I am, I forced my hand and made Chris go get a massage today and yes I even paid for it. I am currently the favorite son (my words not hers, but I can read her mind). She was always throwing out clues that her neck hurt, and she did look like she was going to beat me if I said the wrong thing. It’s been a high stress time, and I think 30 minutes of relaxation would be beneficial (I considered asking for the deep tissue one, so she would be in a little more pain, but I didn’t). She returned and looked refreshed and actually even looked friendly and approachable. If I knew that’s all it took, I would have done it along time ago.
The overall plan for the day has been fairly successful. We wanted all these tests to be run, and we wanted his 103 temperature to decrease. Denise took an extra day of working and was our nurse again and we were all in agreement that it would be best for him to rest again today with all the tests and as hard as he’s worked in the past 36 hrs. We increased the sedation and he’s been resting pretty much most of the day. He’s had a few times were he has been restless, but usually calms down much quicker than the past day and a half. He was moving and flailing his legs so much this morning that Chris was basically practicing for the rodeo, and was even kicked in the jaw a few times. Although I shouldn’t have found it as humorous as I did, I’m glad to see that he’s actually relaxing and getting some rest.
His fever has decreased at this present time and is now at a wonderful 98.1. This is a significant improvement from the 102.4 yesterday at this time which is a temperature that our friend at Baptist would say sounds more like a radio station he’d like to listen to. Overall it’s been a good day, he’s been calm, tests have been good so far, I got Chris out of the hospital, and nothing drastic has changed. I’m just glad today isn’t like it was yesterday. Tomorrow I think the plan is to work more on weaning the drugs. I haven’t talked to anyone to determine the plan of action, but I’m assuming that’ll be the goal unless they feel he needs another day of rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment