When you have a drive of 1 1/2 hours to get to the hospital, you have a lot of time to think. Yesterday morning Emily and I spent the time coming up with questions for the drs., broken down by speciality.

Yesterday was a better day! They were able to turn the Levafed off in the night and his blood pressure stayed stable until morning. They had to turn it back on, but at a very slow rate, and it was tweaked all day. 

Sara told us that cardiology and nephrology disagree on discontinuing the diuretics. Bill's mouth is dry, and you can pull the skin around his ankle up and, as Emily says, it looks like wrinkled paper. So, nephrology wants to stop it since he is dehydrating. Cardiology says, and we didn't hear this until later in the day, that he has right heart failure and needs the diuretic to keep fluid from building around the heart. Late in the day we found out that Dr. Naseer, the nephrologist won the battle and the Lasix would be held.

Dr. Williams said that again Bill's lungs were full of mucus and junk. They sent off lots of sputum and tissue samples to be cultured, and as far as I know, everything has come back negative again. We asked about the PET scan and he said it's too soon to go that route and to wait until the samples come back.

Infectious disease agree with that and said that they were already testing for the NTM, when we showed her the info we found. Dr. Williams also said they were testing for it too. But, Janet, the nurse practitioner, said that culture takes 3 months to grow! She did say that if it came back positive, no matter when, we would be notified.

He has not had to have any more blood, although they are giving him some iron now for anemia. But it seems like all of his other numbers were good. His sugar is stabilizing. They are checking it every 2 hours and treating as needed.

He is having very little urine output and has developed a yeast infection from the antibiotics. We knew he had the yeast at his groin because we could see it, but yesterday afternoon he said that his tongue hurt and, sure enough, there it is. So, they were ordering Nystatin to take care of that and an antifungal cream for the groin.

The gastro doctors don't want to really do anything yet until the pneumonia has cleared. It is time for his colonoscopy, but I don't know if they want to chance the anesthesia quite yet. So that is on hold for right now. Plus, there had been no results from the stool samples.

They have also added Heparin shots as a precaution against blood clots since he's not moving. They started turning him yesterday and he did not like it. He tried to tell me that he didn't sleep on his side and he didn't want to lay on it. But, he ONLY sleeps on his side! 

He didn't have a very good attitude yesterday, and yes, some concessions can be made because he is so sick. But he was very ugly to the PCA who came in to bathe him and he complained the entire time that it hurt and that the water was too hot. Emily and I both tested it and it was not too hot. Then, of course, he had to be rolled to change his bedding which he didn't like. But, once he was settled with warm blankets he calmed down. At one point I told him that we would have spanked the kids for acting like that and if I had to do that I would!

He's not wanting to eat much...except for his dessert. So, again we're having to do what we did with kids, eat 2 bites of this and you can have your dessert. For lunch yesterday he wanted to go straight to the ice cream and last night he wanted to go straight to his strawberry shortcake.

We've noticed that he is on just a regular diet, so I need to get that changed to healthy heart and diabetic today, if they haven't done it already.

We also noticed that if I was in the room, he was very pitiful, moaning and groaning and barely opening his mouth to talk, barely above a whisper. But, Emily said that when I left the room to take a phone call, he was coherent and told her a story about when he was in Japan and she said it was like talking to the "old Bill". But as soon as I came back in he was back to the "woe is me" phase. He would also pout and close his eyes like he was sleeping, but then sneak looks at either me or Emily to see if we were paying attention!

We did get most of our questions answered, but Emily has the papers with the answers! I forgot to get it from her. She is not going with me today as she has church obligations, but told me to text her if she was needed and she's going to check in after church.

So, he is stable for the most part and holding his own. The consensus seems to be that we continue to wait for the cultures to come back before trying anything else. One thing that was suggested to me, and I have to wait until tomorrow to talk to the case manager, Mark, is to see if we can get all of the doctors in the same room, at the same time, at their convenience, just to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as treatment goes. 

Emily and I are both extremely tired. Last night I was in bed a little after 8, just as soon as the animals and I had been fed and a couple of texts sent. I still have to respond to a few messages, but I know the ones who sent them will understand.

Thanks for the comments and prayers and messages. They do help. And if I don't respond quickly to something, or take a phone call, I'm either tied up with Bill, on another call, or just too tired to deal with anything else at that moment. I'm not deliberately ignoring anyone. But, the best place to find information is here and it will be updated daily. Again, I haven't proofed this, so disregard any errors!