BACK IN THE HOSPITAL

I am sorry to say I had to bring Ron back to the hospital Thursday afternoon.
He started feeling very poorly at around 4am...coughing non-stop and developing a very loud wheeze in his chest every time he would breath. He was having a hard time breathing and then had bouts of nausea followed by vomiting and fever.
I was able to get in touch with his surgeon around 11am and she immediately advised me to bring him back in because she was concerned that he was on fluid overload and possibly in rejection.
We arrived to the ER here at UMC at 3:30pm...they took him back right away and started working on him immediately. They confirmed that he was in congestive heart failure and had an infection somewhere as he had a fever of 103.
They immediately put him on IV drips with lasix..steroids..and antibiotics ...they started running blood cultures because they suspected that he was septic as well.
Within the hour he was up in a room in the ICU...they started hooking him up to machines and trying to get various lines in him.
His veins are so shot that they had to put lines in his groin area because nothing else could be found.
They put him back on the ventilator so as not to run into complications during the course of the night ...he had a very low blood pressure when we brought him up to the ICU.

This morning they confirmed that he has pneumonia. His CAT scan showed a large amount of fluid in the left lung and quite a bit of infection in the right lung.
They tapped the left side of his chest ...to the side of the rib cage and drained 1300cc's of fluid..which amounted to a liter and a half.
They have sent some of the fluid for culture to see what type of infection we are dealing with and start him on the appropriate antibiotic.
We are hoping this is the culprit to all the problems he is having right now and that nothing further will come back positive.
His kidney function has slowed down due to the sepsis...so they are planning to start dialysis later today.
So far the preliminary blood cultures have come back with "no growth"...we will know more in a few days.
They have managed to keep him stable. His blood pressure is doing well..his respiration is better...and his temp is back to normal.

The goal now is to pinpoint the infection(s) and treat accordingly.
Make sure there is no rejection ..and if so...treat as needed.
The ICU nurses have been wonderful and it is comforting to have Dr. Smith back on his case calling the shots and overseeing his treatment.

Please keep Ron in prayer ...we hope this will be resolved quickly and that his stay here will be a short one.

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.