Tuesday Evening Post

I am going to try to do the review of the day the best I can. We got a good bit of information and I hope that I get it all across without confusing anyone. The pulmonary doctor thought the lung x-ray looked good today. They are seeing small bits of fluid at the bottom of his lungs. This may be part of the problem with him not taking deep breaths. Hopefully we will find out more on that tomorrow. The kidney numbers were slightly elevated today. He is putting out a good bit of fluid. The doctor is now concerned that he is dehydrated. They are going to start giving him a little more fluid in his IV to help with that problem. We are thinking that we will not be doing dialysis much more. It sounds like we have the green light from the kidney doctor to do the gallbladder surgery. We spoke to the heart doctor today. He was very encouraging to us. He feels the valve problem is something that will need to be fixed but is not the pressing issue right now. He has taken him off all heart related medicines. He is pretty sure that my dad will be out of the hospital and back to work before he has the heart surgery. We were very encouraged by that. We are all ready to get back to normal life. The heart doctor has said that he is fine with going ahead with the gallbladder surgery. Now we come to our main discussion of the day with the surgeon. First off, let me say that God has blessed us with a great team of doctors. They are always willing to sit and talk to us. All have been very honest and answered any and all questions we have had. We have also had wonderful nurses taking care of my dad. We defiantly know that God's hand is in this. All that to say we have hit a wall of frustration. We realize that we are in a waiting game but anyone that knows anything about our family extended or immediate knows we need a plan and we need to know what to expect next. Someone mentioned to my mom last night that they did not understand why the surgeon would not do surgery right now. We all went to bed last night knowing the one person we were looking for today was the surgeon. He should up right at 4 and set with us until 4:45. He quickly picked up on our frustration and let us know that he was getting it from the nurses too. He told us that cat scan looked like they wanted it to. The abase in the colon had shrunk to 1/3 of the size it was. The pocket of fluid behind the pancreas had shown no sign of abase and had not grown any. We asked him what we were waiting for on the gallbladder surgery. He said that he need to be up walking the halls and eating food. Pretty much my dad needs to be stronger to have the surgery. He also explained to us that he thinks that everyone is of the opinion that he has dead tissue floating around inside from the infection. The surgeon assured us that if this was the case he would have to do immediate surgery. So far this is not the case and we can wait. He said that if he was to go in now there is a chance he would disturb the fluid build up because that would potentially cause an infection. Overall we have had a good day. My dad is noticing everything and responding any way he can think of.

Please pray for the lung issue. That is his greatest need right now.

Thanks for the prayers!!!