Tuesday –
You ever have one of those neighbors who sticks a leaf blower or an old fire truck siren in your window to wake you up in the morning? Well maybe it’s just me, but I’m sure you at least have had one who mows the lawn really early or is doing some sort of work outside that wakes you up early on a Saturday or a day in which you’re trying to sleep in. Today is one of those days. There was one family in the waiting room last night until about 3 in the morning with 2 young twins that had a more than healthy set of lungs on them. After I finally fall asleep, I wake up to another family “meeting” at 7 in the morning. There was a group of 7 sitting across from my “bed” discussing how hot the water is in their house, and how many times their phones ring before the answering machine picks up. One guy was also talking about how he doesn’t like coffee, but he likes the way it smells to wake up to. It’s not really the stuff I want to wake up to but I’m guessing it could be a lot worse.
This morning the nurse came to get us and told us the doctor was here and wanted to talk to us. This was a pleasant surprise as it hasn’t happened in a long time. We sat down and had a little family meeting with him and threw our questions and concerns out to him. He was very respectful and we worked over our disagreements and were able to get some questions answered. He reported that the infection was more than likely just a contaminant (something wasn’t fully cleaned probably) and he’s not even going to use antibiotics because it’s not in the blood. They also ordered another CT scan to see if there have been any changes. He reported that there are areas of slow perfusion in the brain which is fairly common with all the drugs he’s on. There are areas that appear to have decreased blood flow to them as well which could be due to his low blood pressure. There is nothing to be overly alarmed with at this point. It’s hard to tell what the final results are going to be like until we clear all these drugs out of his system. The doctor is hopeful and as we all know it’s not going to be an easy road.
The doctor also reported that we try and help to decrease the stimuli. He wants his room to stay fairly quiet and be careful when we touch him or try to calm him down. He said he’s easily agitated and because the effects the medicines have had on his brain, it doesn’t know how to perceive touch at times and that could be why he’s moving so often. It was hard for us today, but we tried to limit the time we were in his room. Chris, Quincy and myself all went to their house for a little while, and of course Quincy had to catch up on the American Idol he had missed, so that being the only TV I am aware of, I was forced to sit through it as welI. (It was funny watching him getting so excited over it). We (I say it like I did it, but I didn’t do anything) washed clothes so we could smell clean and fresh and just took it easy out of the hospital environment. We went to get a bite to eat with grandma and pa and then to the wonderful wal mart to get more bread and water (not really) to eat.
As we returned it was visiting hours so we went back and asked the nurse how he was doing. In passing she said they put him back on blood pressure medicine because his BP was at 60. It didn’t really click until she left, but Chris felt as if it was something she wanted to be informed of. We questioned her a little more and she reported it was 60/30 or somewhere around that. We have the feeling that it could be due to lasix (Water pill) that they had given him. I think they gave him two units of blood by mistake yesterday when it should have been just one so that could be why he had the water pill so that he could get rid of some excess fluid.
No comments:
Post a Comment