April 9 – “The case of the Missing Earrings”

We returned to the ICU yesterday morning, and Mom was sitting up being fed some jello by her nurse.  She looked really tired and pale, but when she saw us she waved and said her usual, “Well, hello, hello, hello.”  Encouraging right off the bat.  As we spent the day with her, she asked for her hearing aid and purse.  Many times.  That part of her is back.  She asked me at one point, “How many children do I have, three?”  I encouraged her that she was correct – three boys.  She said, “Yes.  I got that one right.”  Guess she had been answering some questions.  Of course then she wanted some help getting our names down pat.  And of course I used the opportunity to assure her that I was her favorite son.  And she gave me her sarcastic grin, if a grin can be sarcastic.  Also, at one point she suddenly grabbed the side of her head and cried out, “Oh!”  Of course we rushed to see what was the problem.  She continued, “Someone put earrings in my ears and now they are gone.”  Her nurse chuckled knowingly.  The “earrings” were actually the earplugs they gave her during the MRI.    Earplug earrings.  Gotta love it. 

Well, at this point the bottom line is this.  She had a raging bacterial infection that got into her blood, so she was septic.  Now, as far as how she is responding:

1.  Her fever was down considerably, and she is responding to the antibiotics.  They have changed those around to get more specific in their attack.
2.  They are still concerned about her blood pressure being too low.  It has been hovering in the high 80’s over low 50’s.  They started her on some steroids to try to bring that up some, as well as to ease some of the inflammation.  She is still on heart attack protocol, but her EKG looked good, so they are backing off from that.  They lowered the heparin (blood thinner) dose.
3.  Her hemoglobin is dropping, which could indicate she is bleeding somewhere, so they are watching that very closely.

They did an MRI of her abdomen looking for other possible sources of infection and fractures they may have missed.  None were found.  Docs came by from all of the teams that have dealt with her (except ER, of course). 

Rheumatology wanted more x-rays of her joints, of course.  They also want to follow-up after the infection crisis has ended to see how much stenosis is occurring in Mom’s spine.  Finally, some language that I can understand.  I started to offer up my own body for the junior high students to investigate, but thought better of it.
Orthopedics thought the hip pain was arthritis, but their inspection consisted of rolling her legs slightly back and forth.  Didn’t even wake her up.  They planned to check the MRI but were only there for about two minutes.  They were obviously on their way to or from surgery.  That or the lady doc was about to deliver her baby.  She was incredibly pregnant.
Cardiac said the event may not be as serious as they feared heart-wise.  We’ll take any version of good news we can get, however minor.

Physical Therapy will come in later on to assess her loss of strength ability to get around.  One of the social work managers gave us some heads up about future possibilities.  It may be that Mom will need to go to rehab after the hospital stay.  A lot will depend on how mobile she is and how much we think we will be able to do for her here at home. 

Oh, and we went by to check on Uncle Jerry yesterday as well.  He is being transferred to The Meridan nursing care facility under the care of hospice.  It probably won’t be long now.

Phew.  How many weeks have we been doing this now?  What?  Just a few days?  Read here, “Deep sigh.”

  1 John 5:11-12 says, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Father, we sure do appreciate your hugs these last few days.  I for one have felt them often.  Amen.