friday night late, february 22

today is just ending, so i apologize for the delay in posting.

what a whirlwind of a day: dad was moved to another room (out of the ccu) yesterday afternoon. we were excited about this at first, but it seems as if it might've been a bit premature. obviously, the attention he received went from 24 hour monitoring by one nurse whose desk was situated almost in his room to being one of several patients on a floor. we were a bit concerned about last night being his first night out of the ccu, so i went up to check on things around 11 p.m. and discovered that not only was he not being "cared for" to be so critical, but the nurse who had been on duty for 4 hours hadn't even read his chart. you can only imagine how that made us feel. i was telling her his numbers and she said, "you're telling me more than i know." thus, that became the theme of today.

bottom line is that they have him on a wait list to head back to ccu so that we can be assured he'll be taken care of. pray this happens shortly. several of the doctors we spoke with agreed he should probably be relocated once a bed opens up. apparantly, there were patients that had more "critical" needs that needed his bed. the ccu is the only place where you can be on the ventilator and dad was off of that...but that doesn't necessarily mean he was ready to have less care. they needed his bed for someone on a vent, so to sum it up, his move was due to overcrowding (we found out today). that was a scary feeling.

with dad not being in the ccu, the dialysis machine doesn't come to his room, he had to go to another floor for it. this part really shook him up because they came and got him really early this morning (his days and nights are still mixed up and confused) and no one would like getting awoken and shuffled down 4 floors in the cold and not knowing what is going on! poor thing had only moved from his bed to his chair once or twice - then they had him trucking up and down the halls of the hospital...it was just all too much, too fast. it was slightly overwhelming to say the least.

so we (as calmly as possible) asked to speak with the patient liason to get things on the right course. we paged a few of his doctors and expressed our concerns as politely as we could. at one point one of them tried to make me "understand" that the nurses have several patients each that they are looking after and that it's not the same focused care as ccu. we promptly replied that "we don't care how many patients they have. he WILL receive the care he specifically needs."

so, we pray that sooner than later he can be moved back to the ccu so he will be able to be monitered more carefully as well as have dialysis in his room so he won't have to be taken to a different location. i think he was just thrown to the lions a little too quickly and a little too abruptly. he has enough on his plate to deal with physically than to have to deal with making such big changes all in a 24 hour period!

i've saved the good news for last! (yes, the day wasn't all muck)! after dialysis, his post-dialysis blood draw came back with the lowest creatinine and BUN levels yet! woo hoo! the BUN was in the 50s and his creatinine was in the 5's. which for those of you number junkies, his post dialysis levels had not been any lower than the 70s (bun) and the 6's (creatinine) the entire time. ideal numbers are lower than 25 (BUN) and .6-1.2 (creatinine) but dad's will probably never be that low again, so we're just praying for as low as they'll go! so those numbers are a great thing! i'm not sure what his levels will be in the morning (they stair-step back up which is expected - it's the see saw i've mentioned before)...but as long as the morning levels are lower than the previous morning's levels, then we're headed in the right direction (down)!

the rest of the gang is in this weekend. we wish the "real world" didn't exist and we could all camp out here together everyday to see mom and dad through until he's back to good health. it's times like these, though, that make us so thankful for the family we have and the love that's so evident between us all.

specifics:

*a bed becomes available in the ccu
*that dad can grasp all of this new information that has happened - it's all "news" to him. what a shock to wake up to all of these bells and whistles and a 10 inch stapled cut in your gut and not remember anything about the past 2 1/2 weeks. i don't envy how he's feeling in any sense of the word. at the least, it's completely overwhelming physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. today he asked me the date (22nd) and asked what day it was when he got to the hospital (3rd). that was a tough moment to see the wheels turning in his eyes.
*kidney(s) begin to work on their own
*he gets rest - it's hard for him to get deep sleep in the hospital environment and with all the overwhelming facets he's having to deal with in his mind.
*mom gets rest so she can have the energy for both of them over the next bit of time.

thanks for all of the cards, comments, and emails. mandy's already started working on a compilation of them all so that when dad is better, he can read through all of your correspondence. it will be a huge blessing to him when he will most need it!

keep those prayers coming!