A Steady Day

Jerry's progress is slight, but he seems to be holding his own today. He's better, the same, and worse depending on which issue you are talking about.

Dialysis continues but there are no real positive or negative results. They are not pulling fluid off due to the continuing instability in his blood pressure. The good news is the edema is the same and not worse.

His blood pressure continues to need constant attention and medicinal support. He has been on and off of a combination of 3 blood pressure medications and is pressure is still borderline. He can't hold it on his own without the help of meds.

He may be developing a new pneumonia bacteria. There is a lot of talk about whether or not he is septic. The medical teams seem to be disagreeing somewhat on definitive diagnoses of sepsis and ARDS. One team says yes, another team says maybe not. Debbie seems to think the disagreement is because of he complicated nature of diagnosing each of those conditions. She is going under the assumption that he does have both after hearing from all of the teams and nurses. In addition, they are treating him for sepsis and ARDS.

There is a new and disturbing development. They confirmed with a Doppler scan yesterday that he has a blood clot in his left calf. This poses yet another risk to his health. He had to be put back on blood thinner to help deal with this. The blood thinner poses other risks like bleeding in the lungs.

The trach is still set for this week. Since he is in MICU he will not have to go to the OR. They will be able to do the procedure right there. That is good news since he is so sensitive to movement.

Nutrition is still a challenge. Debbie is hoping they get an OG solution to that problem soon.

She is very thankful that they are in MICU even though it has put extra stress on the situation. This floor is much different than CCU. He is very needy medically and they are able to provide more intense care.

Specific Prayer Requests

1. Pray for Jerry to get off and stay off the blood pressure medications. Pray that his body will maintain his own blood pressure.
2. Pray for some nutritional success with the OG tube to get some motility going.
3. Pray for Debbie to figure out the best way to deal with the long term nature of the situation.

Debbie is continuing to be thankful for the care he is getting. She continues to be inspired by people at Northwestern. She feels like they have a cheering section from CCU. Many of them continue to seek her our in MICU and follow Jerry's progress.