SOMETHING NEW

It was 11pm last night that Ron and I discovered something new on the right side of his sternum.....fluid. He has a pocket of fluid in his chest. I immediately asked the nurses to call his doctor to see what we should do. There is no pain associated with this and no swelling. You can just tell from looking at it that there is definitely fluid beneath the surface. When you touch it ...it is very soft. Ron says he can feel the fluid move when you touch the area. I actually spoke with his doctor last night on the phone. He said that it is probably fluid buildup when they went in to repair the sternum. It could have been accumulating very slowly. It will more than likely not be an issue provided it is not infected. He wanted to know if Ron was running a fever. I said no....but he is on percocets constantly for pain...which has Tylenol in it...so if there was a fever....we would not know. I had the nurses withhold his percocets over night...and sure enough...Ron has a fever this morning.....an our ago it was at 99.5. It has not been checked again...but I am sure it has climbed. He said he feels very sluggish this morning. I told him it is the fever that is making him feel this way. I will have them check it again. If it is higher...I will go ahead and let them give him the percocet to bring it back down. The doctor told me he would have an X-Ray done today to get a clearer picture of what is going on. I don't know what the process is to drain this fluid if it is in fact infected. Please pray that this is a quick fix without any major surgery involved. I really don't want something else to set him back even further. He was starting to make such good progress. We were looking foward to really having a good physical therapy day today. I want to believe we will still be able to have one.

I will update as soon as I know more.