Mom’s Status: 2010-08-02
01:15 PM: We visited Mom. She’s not good. In fact, she appears more sick today than yesterday. Here are the tid bits I picked up from the nurse as well as my own observations:
- Her temperature has fallen back to near normal. It fluctuated between 99.7 and 98.9 while we visited. That’s down from 104 yesterday, and down from 101 degrees this morning. They had her on an ice blanket earlier to cool her.
- Her blood pressure is better too, at 117 / 68.
- It’s strange that her readings appear better but her overall disposition seems worse.
- She complained of being very cold. She shivered violently in front of us. We covered her with a couple blankets and four pillows. But only her falling asleep got the shivering to stop. She appears to be suffering an in distress – she’s frowning. She is quite uncomfortable at this point.
- We saw IVs of dextrose and heparin (to keep her blood from getting too thick).
- She cannot swallow — not alert enough to do it without risk of gagging or choking. So they’re giving her fluids intravenously. Thus, her mouth is very dry and she asked for a drink a few times. So the nurse allowed us to wet her mouth and tongue with a little water.
- When she is awake, she’s suffering generalized pain from the fever. So they’ve given her 2 MG of morphine. This may be impacting her coherency.
- Her blood cultures were positive, which means that she indeed has contracted a blood infection, which the nurse said is quite serious, and could degenerate into a life-threatening status at any time. She’s taking an antibiotic fight it (Bankomisan?).
- She has a foot ulcer and a nasty bruise on her left arm; presumably from where she received the IV in the ambulance.
- We verified that the hospital has the power-of-attorney papers and that they’re aware of our wishes should Mom require ongoing life support.
- Mom wants help through reviving if she’ll be able to lead a normal life afterwards. But should she become vegetative, and there is no hope of improvement, then she wishes not to be kept alive.
- Mom is not stable enough for the GI scopes. So they can’t investigate the internal bleeding further until she gets stronger.
We’ll visit her again later today and hopefully, she’ll improve.
04:00 PM: Unofficially, Mom appears to have developed endocarditis, which is an inflammation of the inside lining of the heart. Her condition is grave at present but we have not talked to her cardiologist for an official diagnosis. We’re still awaiting this as well as a prognosis.
05:00 PM: Just arrived at hospital. More details when we depart.
07:00 PM: We just finished our evening visit, sisters Christine, Mary Ann, and I. Sister Diane came up this afternoon for a couple hours. But this time, I observed the following:
- When we arrived, Mom’s temperature was 101.5, but creeped up to 102.3 in the two hours we were there.
- They had to clean out her colon, that was highly impacted. We hoped to see improvement in her responsiveness as a result. But so far no change has occurred.
- She’s breathing steadily and not labored but but loudly.
- She’s still cold but not as much so as this morning.
- She slept practically the whole time tonight; though she opened her eyes a few times and did recognize us when we said good-bye.
- The nurses gave her more Tylenol to lower her temperature. But this seemed to have no effect, even after an hour. So they put her on a colling blanket again.
- Her cardiologist read her EKG for us and did see something flapping around near her heart valves. He agreed that this could indeed be vegetation that results from endocarditis. However, he won’t be sure of that until they do an ultrasound scope to get a closer look at the heart and surrounding tissue. They may do that tomorrow; depending on Mom’s stability. He was surprised that this problem progressed so rapidly and seemed moved, and when he realized how serious her condition was, he said, “I’m so sorry.” Me too.
- He’s consulting with the infectious diseases doctor to make sure Mom is getting sufficient anti biodics as well as the correct type for this infection.
- I kissed her and rubbed cheeks with her. She’s very warm. I told her we’d see her again tomorrow.