Catching it early

I had a friend post a very appropriate Bible verse on my facebook wall today. It was, "I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths," says the LORD. Proverbs 4:11

Today, that was soooo true. At 10:30 a.m. local time, we walked onto the 8th floor to Karl's room to be greeted by a young doctor who told us Karl was being transferred to the intensive care unit on the 7th floor. His blood pressure had dropped, he was in a significant amount of pain and his heart rate was high. If you've been following Karl at all over the past few months, you know that's nothing new. But they weren't taking any chances.

Throughout the day dozens of doctors, nurses and techs filtered in and out of his room, starting with the charge nurse Gary, whom we remembered (and who remembered Karl from two years ago). He assessed Karl's decube and determined that it was likely infected. He repacked and immediately got the infection control docs in the room who quizzed us about all of Karl's allergies. We told them what we knew and referred them to Karl's nephrologist at the U. They came up with two antibiotics they thought would be easy on Karl's kidneys, which were still reading a 3.0 on the toxic creatinine scale. They were pumping him full of fluids and gave him a bolus of pain killer, which helped, but didn't completely get the job done. So they hooked up one of those buttons Karl could push, which of course, he pushed every 10 seconds just to see if he could get away with an extra one. We talked about free-basing dilauded, but Gary said it would set off the fire alarm.

Other than the pain and being incredibly tired, Karl felt fine and his humor was in good form. Throughout the day we talked about Big Time Wrestling, the new Filipino lead singer for the rock band Journey and of course, he got to tell all the nurses how horrible his mother and sister were for buying things with the Mayo logo while he had nothing with the Mayo logo and that he was responsible for our "vacation" and without him we'd have nothing, blah, blah, blah.

Of course all day they were trying to pinpoint the cause of this probable infection so they cultured everything from blood to urine. Then Andy, his nurse for most of the day, said they needed a sputum culture. Karl said, "Sputum?" "Spit," Andy said. "Spit?" asked Karl teasingly, knowing full well what Andy was asking for but egging him on. "Okay, Karl. You want me to get technical. We need you to really work one up. We need you to hock a loogie."

While nothing was substantiated during the day via cultures and other tests, doctors felt they had caught an infection very early. Karl's vitals were stabilized, his pain was regulated and he was finally able to eat as we were leaving. They postponed his CT scan and biopsy until tomorrow. They moved him into the Clinitron bed filled with sand and air that keeps pressure off his heels and bum. You could tell he was feeling much better.

While we know there are some obstacles in the way, we feel so confident about the care he's receiving and that the people there truly care about him. We believe we've been guided down the straight path. And for that we are so thankful.

Thanks for your prayers. Blessings to all.

Kerry

P.S. Mom could use an extra prayer...while getting out of her seat on the shuttle bus tonight, she twisted her knee. I think she may have messed up her ACL. I got her a brace and it makes her feel more stable, but she's iced it most the night and is walking very gingerly and with quite a limp. Hoping it's better in the a.m.