Tuesday AM 10-01-08

Time keeps marching on and I lose track of it. It is another month! Mother has a low grade fever this morning. The doctor took her off of aspirin and another medicine for heart thinning because of the bleeding, so adjustments continue to be dynamic. Her lungs are about the same as yesterday as evidenced by the Xray this morning. Her white blood count is higher, around 18,000. There are no indicators that reveal what is happening if anything. Her condition can just result in fever some days. However, there could be an infection. She had a blood culture ordered this morning to see if there is anything that can be detected. It is doubtful it will show anything. She has had many and all turned out to be negative. That is good. The doctor wants to be sure nothing new is developing. He put her back on some antibiotics temporarily just to make sure. She is doing OK with her bowel movements and there is no detectable blood loss, so an increase in tube feeding was ordered. She is not on morphine nor any sedatives but is on a pain medicine.

The lung doctor says she has fluid on her lungs but there has been no change. Her trial for removing the ventilator equipment failed. She was OK for a few hours but her oxygen lowered and the machine had to be restarted. They ran it overnight in a combined mode but now have switched back to full assist at a Oxygen level of 50% and a rate of 8. She is breathing faster than 8 on her own. This is a setback and could be a brick wall. If a brick wall, she may take a lot longer to come out of this. We will consider a tracheostomy on Monday or Tuesday.

We have asked for a meeting of doctors again to see if a concensus can be determined on her outlook. Today, she remains in a state of recognizing people. Two people have seen a smile on her face when they talked to her. I was one of them. She looks at visitors in the eyes and will turn her head voluntarily to look at them. I started talking about he tstock market and she woke up, opened her eyes wide and seemed interested tis morning. It is undetermined if she still is able to take and respond to commands by the staff. That is required before they take her off of the ventilator. The effects of the Propofol remains in question. The goal is to get her back into the discussion of her future and her desire to stick with this fight for her life.

The dialysis extracted 2.4 liters of fluid this morning. The target was 3.5 so this was not as good as hoped. The rest of her chemistry appears to be OK.