Sunday, November 12, 2023

Trying to stay ready

Nothing new is really going on right now. The doctors continue to say Becky is doing as well as can be expected given the circumstances. She’s pretty much holding steady. She’s still on the CRRT for continuous dialysis. She’s on a feeding tube at night. They still want her to try to eat some during the day, but she doesn’t have much of an appetite. She had one piece of MOD pizza for lunch yesterday and I think she had a few bites of her dinner. I’m settling in to my new remote work office (shown in the photo).

The doctors continue to be proactive whenever something seems to be trending in the wrong direction. Becky’s sugar levels were starting to spike from time to time so now they’re monitoring that more closely and she’s getting regular insulin. As she spends more time in bed, her battle with reflux gets more challenging. The doctors are working on meds to help that as best they can.

I think the biggest medical question right now is why her CRRT filter continues to clog. If the nurses don’t see it coming soon enough, they’re not able to return her blood to her before the machine shuts down. That generally leads to giving her another unit of blood in order to replace what was lost - something they would prefer not to do any more than they have to. I believe she’s had to have three units of blood so far. At this point, they are planning to do some more tests on her blood to see if there is some medical anomaly in her blood chemistry that’s leading to the filter clogging. The ICU doctor tried to explain it to me, but it went over my head.

Waiting is hard. Becky is getting tired of having tubes connected, getting poked and prodded, and generally being told what to do. She’s looking forward to Tuesday, but that’s just the day she becomes active on the transplant list again. As much as she would like that to be the last day of waiting, there’s no way to know. This could go on for some time until a matching donor is offered and accepted.

Continued prayers are welcome. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to coordinate a phone call with her.

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