Fistulagram

The fistulagram went well. The fistula appears to be fine, no further surgery is needed. The plan is for him to come home tomorrow. Hopefully he will get one more round of dialysis as he is carrying around some excess fluid. Thanks to Dawn, Kathy and Joey and Kristen for the food. We should be eating good this week!

Sunday night

Neal is doing good. He is no longer on oxygen. He has an elevated enzyme from his heart, but it appears as though it is from excess fluid. He will get dialysis Monday morning and then head off to his fistulagram. The doctors are thinking he may go home Tuesday. I will fill you in as more information comes. He may be out of commission for visitors. Feel free to call before you come up, I will be with him all day 293-5042.

He is now in private room 986. We have playstation set up and plenty of DVD's. As Neal says, don't steal my stuff!

Update

Hello,

Looks like I am going to be in the hospital until Tuesday. I have to have my fistula gram done so I need to stay in here so they can monitor my thinning blood. I had a bloody nose last night for about 6 hours. It came back this morning. I feel much better but still have some stomach and pain issues. Talk to you later.

P.S. My weight is now down to 211 pounds. At one point I was up to 270. Thornton I can now fit into my year 2004 St. Patty's day subway slider shirt. IT IS AN XL ONLY.

Friday

Neal is in dialysis this morning. I am not quite sure how long he will run since this is his third day in a row there. Yesterday he only ran for 2 hours. The doctors are going to try and do a fistulagram today to figure out what is going on with his fistula. The second site just does not want to work. We still do not know what time this is. They had to load him up with plasma last night to get his INR below 2.0 so that they could do the surgery. I have not yet heard what his levels are.

We still do not have a release date. His breathing is definitely better, but the fever still comes and goes. Yesterday he walked down to the gift shop to buy some things. He still has not gotten his private room, but his roommate is really nice. Neal is actually talking to him every once in a while! Unfortunately he will be readmitted around the 9th for his colon surgery, but hopefully we can get him out for a little while.

CHANGE OF PLANS....his INR is not going low enough, so they are going to do the fistulagram on Monday now. You know what that mean, he has to stay in the hospital all weekend and then has to stay after the procedure a couple of days to get his INR back up above 2, which seems to take 4 days. Yuck!

PCRM

I receive a call from the new PCRM Peggy! I have to take back what I said. She is very nice. At this point there are no changes in Neal's treatment. Peggy is going to call me if anything does change. I will update as I hear more.

Just got a call from Neal, he is doing another round of dialysis today. HE WILL BE IN DIALYSIS from 11:30 until about 3:00 is my guess, but I am not 100% sure.

Doctor update

We saw a doctor today. It was not Neal's doctor so we may receive a different story tomorrow. The x-ray showed pneumonia in the bottom of both lungs. They are treating him with different IV antibiotics. We should know more tomorrow. Visitors are more than welcome. He is on some pain meds, so he may be a little loopy. If you do go, please try to get him up and moving. I will be returning to work the rest of the week. At this point we do not know how long he will be there.

He is in room 924 Rhodes. It is right off the elevators. We are going to try to get him into a private room.

I tried to contact his PCRM (I think patient care resource manager) and for some reason it is someone new this time. This essentially means I will have to make a lot of calls until someone answers the phone as I have not had much luck hunting anyone new down by leaving voicemails. I hope to get ahold of them in order to hear what the doctors are thinking. This individual typically does rounds with the docs.

Back to the ER

Well, I am not sure what happened. Last night Austin, Neal and I were staining the deck. After Neal went to sleep he started to develop a fever and was having a lot of problems breathing. After arriving at work Neal called me to take him to the ER. On my way home, I called 911 and apparently Neal did as well. We were both on the same page. They arrived quickly. His oxygen saturation was around 86, which is not good. They put him on oxygen and drove him to the ER. Preliminarily the doctors are thinking pneumonia again, but we have no confirmation yet. They have already drawn lab work and taken a chest x-ray. He is going to be admitted. I will let you all know his status once we hear back from the doctors. For anyone that has seen him lately, you know he seemed to be in the best condition ever. I am not sure what brought this on.

Neal went to dialysis around 11 and will be there until about 3. We still do not know what room he will be admitted to.