Again, I can’t thank everyone enough for the good wishes and prayers. Everyone says to let them know if there is anything they can do and to be honest, the only thing we really need right now is for you to keep us in our thoughts and prayers. The encouraging emails and texts help a whole lot because sometimes I feel like I’m sitting here in a vacuum with no connection to the outside world so getting that ping in my email means more than you know.
Overall John is doing well, but he is still in ICU. The good news is that his blood pressure has been up all day (that’s a good thing because it was low) and they’ve reduced the amount of times they’re checking it from four times an hour to once an hour. He’s up and watching TV and they’re letting him eat. Sean brought us Soup Box today for lunch so that was a great treat and much better than hospital food :). They’re letting him stand up and move from the chair to the bed, but he can’t move any farther than that because he is still tethered to the wall.
They’re still concerned about the amount of blood he’s lost due to the internal bleeding where they inserted the line in his femoral artery. They may end up giving him another pint of blood, but they’ll make that decision in a little bit. We also still don’t know what the strategy is for the other artery that is blocked, but as of today they were leaning toward having him come back in in a few weeks and fix that on an outpatient basis.
We’re also starting to talk about long term strategies and we are in from some big changes on the home front. Less red meat, more fish, NO butter (okay that one hurts me a lot), and for John no smoking (the hardest one for him). Every doctor in here has stressed that he has to stop smoking so this doesn’t happen again. That will be the toughest part of the whole thing.
I do have to say that all of the doctors we’ve had (and it feels like zillions) and all the members of the staff have been wonderful. They’ve been kind, competent, and very professional. Anyway, thanks for listening. I’ll send out another update in the morning.
Cairn by Cairn 