BACK TO HIMSELF

Ron is definitely feeling more like himself today. He is much more verbal in what he wants and when he wants it...especially his pain medicine. He was very specific on what he wanted for breakfast this morning ...he was very aurnery with the nurses this morning too..... He is in a better mood now ...given that I have returned from running errands for him at Wal-Mart. As I said before....he is getting pretty good at letting me know what he wants...and he wanted a few things today. After breakfast he sent me out to get him some western magazines....some "snacks" (gummy worms) .....and a few other things....It is so nice to see him sitting up in bed reading through a magazine...he has not wanted to do this...or felt up to doing this in such a long time. It is such a good feeing. He sat up in the cadillac chair at 7am this morning....he got a good early start. I know I find myself saying this alot but he is quite amazing! This latest thing the doctors are now discussing wih Ron's case is that now he may be needing another pace maker...yes, another one. Ron just can't seem to escape them. Prior to his first transplant Ron had a diffibrillator/pacemaker...then after his first transplant...his heart rate always ran low...so he left here with a pacemaker. This time around...because they had to give him so much medication to keep his heart rate down when he was having so much tachacardia...(elevated heart rate)....this medicine lingers in your system for a very long time...months...so now, his heart rate has decreased more than what we would like to see in a transplant patient. The lowest they took him this morning was 56...it could have gone lower but they did not want to chance it. He is still on an outboard pacemaker to keep him at a rate of 99 -100 beats per minute. They wanted to take him to surgery today to put the pacemaker in...but Ron and I advised them we were not ready to do this. He is still hurting so much from the surgery he just had on Friday for his sternum......We just want to give him time to heal from this....and wait to see if his heart rate gets back to normal range on it's own...it's a long shot....but Ron has managed to beat the odds more than once..so why not wait and see....it can't hurt. We will just continue to speak to the Lord and ask for his guidance and grace to do what he sees to be right for Ron ...if anyone can continue to heal his heart it is HIM. Ron is fine with the fact that he may need a pacemaker. As he sees it...he came with one...he has no problem leaving with one. He has been through the worst of it....this is minor given everything he has overcome. He is almost done with his dialysis treatment today. I asked the doctors to work on getting more fluid off of him as he had very puffy feet today. We had planned on having him excercise on some foot pedals last night while he sat on the edge of the bed but is feet were too fat to fit in the pedals. I told the doctors to work a little hard to add longer time to his dialysis treatments. They started to today...however they gave him pain medicine just before starting dialysis...this tends to drop his blood pressure...and when his blood pressure gets too low...they cannot pull much fluid off of him...so we are not getting as much off as we would have liked. Now, I need to work on getting them better coordinated with the time he gets his pain meds vs when he will get dialysis..just some needed improvement on coordination and communication. Hopefully, physical therapy will be here today...they have put in several request for a PT consult ...but we continue to wait on this. In the meantime..I continue to help Ron exercise his legs and arms to get some strength in them and keep his joints from tightening up more than they already have.