Drew has some New Pink Gear

Well something not so fun in the Morgan household. Drew accidentally slipped off our bed and somehow landed on her arm. Her radius and humerus have 2 small breaks, called buckle breaks. So if you see our little girl in the next 3-6 weeks, she will have a cute pink cast on. She is doing fine, and once she was in the cast, it doesn't seem to bother her at all. Maybe sometime I will put some good news on this blog.

Not too much new with Chris which is why I haven't posted. He is still getting dialysis 3 times per week but is also making some of his own urine which is a good sign. They are watching lab values now and sometimes will skip a day (although they usually have to dialyse him the next day) to see how he does. He still has trouble with his catheter clotting but I am sure they want to see how long he is going to need this before they put in a new one.

He has had two swallow evaluations and failed the first one but passed the second one for being able to swallow soft foods (maybe pureed - didn't get specifics from Teri). However, after 24 hours of eating his cough has worsened considerably and Teri is worried that he may have aspirated (gotten food into his lungs) so they have stopped feeding him again.

He has a pretty big bed sore on his bum which can happen when you don't get out of bed much and you don't have good tissue because of all the chronic medical problems and the drugs. So, he is holding steady - no really good news or bad news which is a pretty good thing all things considered.

Update

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. We celebrated Drew's birthday on Sunday - she seemed to enjoy her party and put on quite a messy show while eating her birthday cupcake. I'll post pictures sometime.

Chris is continuing to improve little by little. He did briefly go into atrial fibrillation on Christmas Day and when he dropped his blood pressure they had to cardiovert him (which means shock his heart back into normal sinus rhythm). Atrial fibrillation is a very common heart arrythmia and could have been caused by electrolyte abnormalities or his pneumonia. They have him on a drug called amiodarone to control the rhythm now. He has had trouble getting his dialysis because his catheter is clotted - they had to skip it yesterday but put some meds in to bust up the clot. They got about 2 of the 3 hours of dialysis done today but had to stop because it clotted again. So, they will likely have to replace it.

That's all the news for now.

Christy

Good news - Chris was extubated last night and has been doing well all day. He underwent dialysis again today and even sat up in bed and smiled at Teri afterwards. They will be checking labs on a daily basis to see if his kidneys are working again. We will keep you posted.

Christy

Update on Chris

Teri asked me to post something to bring everyone up to speed on events in the last week. Chris had been hospitalized with pneumonia again and Tuesday night acutely deteriorated. He has gone into acute renal (kidney) failure (he probably has some component of chronic renal insufficiency because frequently when he is sick his kidney markers have jumped up) and this acute worsening is likely due to his infection (this is Christy's comment completely). This caused his organic acid levels in his bloodstream (as well as potassium and other waste products) to increase. The only other way your body has as a means to get rid of acid is to breathe it out in the form of carbon dioxide. If your lungs aren't too happy to begin with and you throw this extra work their way, you tend to tire out which is what happened in the early morning hours of Wednesday. So, he was transferred to the ICU, intubated, and sedated to help blow off the excess CO2. That worked well and they made preparations for hemodialysis (to compensate for the kidney failure). They still have no idea what is causing the pneumonia but are treating for nasty things like fungus since he is a transplant patient with a severely weakened immune system. He tolerated his first round of dialysis and has continued to improve with his breathing so today they turned off his sedation and are going to try to extubate him soon. He will require dialysis until his kidney function returns (there are no guarantees that it will but we will hope for the best) and it is usually done 3 days per week (M,W,F or T, Th, S). So, he will get his next round of dialysis on Friday. We will try to continue updates this way so Teri doesn't have to field too many calls.

Christy

A Couple of picts

Drew seeing how we look sideways


The 2 little ones getting ready to go on a walk with Mommy



Trevor on a tractor when we went apple picking

I will try and put some more up sooner.

-rm

Picture of Drew

Well Drew is keeping us pretty busy. She is already crawling all over the place. 6 months ahead of Trevor. She pulls up to everything, and everything goes in her mouth. I just wanted to share a picture that I took of her, while in Florida.

--rm