Tuesday Afternoon Update

I was finally about to get up to the hospital this morning. (My son is sick also so my time of freely being up at the hospital is not so free anymore). I talked to the nurse (same day nurse as yesterday) and was able to get some answers.

• Fever, thankfully this morning he didn't have one, although last night they did end up getting him something for it.
• Infectious doctor did take cultures from blood, urine and stools so that made us feel better.
• Heartrate went up to 140 again, and had to be given some meds for that, the heart Dr said that he wasn't going to sign off on dad going to the Rehab ICU until it stayed under 100 for 24 hours.
• Dad has had a horrible cough and this is constant, not every now and then I mean breathing is like coughing to him. They were giving him some Robitesen (sp?) for it although it is not at all getting better. The nurse said that he put in a call to one of his doctors to look into giving him something else because it is not getting any better and at times only getting worse.
• They are taking chest x-rays still every morning and those are looking good.
• They are going to try to get him on a Mon, Wed and Fri schedule with Dialysis and see how he does with that.
• They were able to start him back on blood thinners last night. They are closely monitoring this and running tests to keep doses appropriate with everything he has going on.

Dad overall today did not look good at all. Back to being stoic, and when I asked him how he was doing he just looked straight ahead and said "I'm having a rough go at it". Usually he will just say "okay" only later to find out that he is in pain, etc...this time he actually admitted it. His main complaint was his chest and how much it hurt and how much the coughing just made it worse.

Please continue to pray that we can get to the bottom of this. Mom made the comment to me today "It was easier for me to handle this when I was in shock then now for some reason". She went on to talk more about how this is still shocking to her, but different then the initial happenings of it all. This week is the start of her being up there alone more then not alone as my brother nor I can be up there as much this week. From what we have seen (the last 5 evenings or so) the 6pm and 8pm visits are when dad seems to be the worse which is harder on mom emotionally to have to see...not to mention not being able to see him all afternoon between 2-6.

We are all physically and emotionally drained and as a family we ask for prayers for the strength to continue on strong through this process and for us to be at peace of mind when we need to take a break and relax and step away for a minute.

God Bless!!