Update #31

Dad continues to get better and lower his needed vent settings. The surgeons just approved the surgery and they will begin at 1300 today. I will post again later with more information.

Till next time...

Update #30

Well.... The surgery we were all anticipating today was cancelled by the surgeons. Dads oxygen requirement was Not quite at a level surgeons are comfortable with. A few days ago dad was at 60%, yesterday 55%, and just now 50%. Surgeons need dad to be at 40% for the procedure. A big part of this is that when the surgery happens that dad needs to be able to breath with out oxygen support for a short period. In order for them to be comfortable with that, his oxygen resource needs to be stable and at 40%. They will see how his oxygen intake in the morning and re-address the procedure. So for now the procedure is postponed.

I also spoke with the one of the attending doctors immediately after. As we have been observing with doctors, they are skeptical with dads levels and Flags for Infection. Since dad is on a heavy and broad band of antibiotics they believe that their is a pocket somewhere in his body that may be protecting the infection and not allowing the antibiotics to get to it. All the big wigs and attending doctors met this morning about this. They contacted a Radiologist specialist to compare and analyze yesterday’s CT Scan to last weeks for his whole body . What staff has noticed is that the Blebs/Cyst in dads lungs still exist And have noted 2 of the Blebs/cyst ( that are large compared to the others) Have slightly grown in dads right lung. So after they consulted with each other about it they believe the this is where the infection pocket may exist. They want to drain one of them.

In addition, I just got off the phone with the radiologist who analyzed the 2 large blebs. One of them easily accessible. It is located in the plural space, which is the area between the chest wall and lung. This will be the Bleb they will access at low risk due to its location. With the density of the imaging it is hard to really tell if all the existing Blebs/cyst are either in/out of his lungs. What they will do is take an extremely small needle and access dads chest wall and drain the Bleb that is accessible. This will serve two purposes; 1) They will be able to monitor dads condition and see how he does clinical with the Bleb Size decreased They next few days, 2) They will be able to analyze the fluids. The fluids will be observed under a microscope as well sent to a lab for testing and to be cultured to decipher the infection. This is a great chance to see what this stuff really is and determine if this is the cause of hiccups in his progression of his care.

Now with that being said, overall , dads ventilator setting Are slowly decreasing and dads resources lessening. That means he is still making small improvements. Clearly not at the level for the needed procedure but improving. The draining of the bleb is a common procedure and is done regularly for outpatient care. It is low risk and will take about 45 min to complete. This will done today.

I have yet to receive official 24hour update. This is just what has happened during the Monday meeting with docs and surgery involvement.

Till next time...

Update #29

Dads condition is still fairly stable and has not fluctuated. The efforts to wean him off caused minor challenges which needed some adjustments on the ventilator settings. Outside of that there are no major changes in his health.

Doctors reached out to additional SME’s (subject matter experts) regarding infections. Dad gained a real slight temperature at one point, had an increase in blood pressure, and an increase in heart rate. Each of these as an individual is not a cause for concern. All together staff see this to fit criteria that indicate possible infection/s. So not that doctors are not aware existing infections in dads body, hence the broad dose of antibiotics, but the SME’s were able to relate that staff is doing the right thing with his current condition an infections. Staff reached out to the SME’s to remain proactive and try tackle the infection ahead of time if needed.

I also spoke with the general surgeons today regarding dads tracheostomy procedure. With dads condition they have scheduled the procedure to be conducted at 10am tomorrow. As with any/all procedures their are risk. For this one in particular the risk is that staff will be working so close to other organs and do not want to harm anymore. In addition, dads lungs needed to be stable and test negative x2 for Covid. The negative test result blocks are checked. In terms of the stability, the surgeons needed dads level/s not to be fluctuating all over the place so they can gauge his Provided oxygen intake as well as others. The reason for this is so they can control the closing of the small incision (cut) for the tracheostomy procedure. With that said, Oxygen is highly flammable. So now that they can measure the oxygen level fairly they believe dads levels are low enough and is ready for the procedure as control the risk of the flammable material. So pending any significant changes the procedure will move forward. I will touch base with the surgical team in the morning to cross the T’s and dot the I’s.

Till next time...