Ron returned from surgery with a lot of pain. He said this pain was far worse than any other pain he has experienced. I guess it would be severe given this is the fourth time having his sternum worked on. But, they set him up with a morphine PCA..which allows him to press a button every 6 minutes to get a hit of morphine. He is taking full advantage of this while he can. I told him he may as well so he can get a good night's sleep. It turns out that the repair to the sternum was not as extensive as they thought it would be. They managed to clean out some of the dead tissue and restaple everything together. They ended up doing the cardiocversion after all...shocked the heart back into normal sinus rythm...this time it worked. They also did another esophageal echo to check how the heart was doing. They said it read at 45-55 this time...lower than what the last echo showed. Hopefully, the new medication he is due to take again on Monday may help to increase the rate agan. We will have to wait and see. He is being paced with an outboard pacemaker just to give the heart time to readjust after surgery. His blood pressure looked great today and he is showing signs of more urine output. After surgery ...they had a wound care nurse come by to look at his open wound where they had done his kidney transplant. She did a good job working on it. Tomorrow the renal doctors will be back in ...they will use silver nitrate to help stop the bleeding in some areas. The wound care nurse will then return to treat the area as they did today. This should be a daily thing if I understood them correctly. My hope is that his diabetes and the fact that he is immunosuppressed will not complicate things much. While this has been an incredible rollercoaster ride for us...Ron and I agree we could not imagine taking this ride with anyone else. It was a ride specially made for us...and we plan to see it through together. We know the Lord continues to be with us and will do so for the long haul. |
"So be strong and courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord!" Psalm 31:24
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