Frustrating Day

Day 2 at St Joseph hospital. Today has been very frustrating for her. A broken MRI machine delayed getting the important internal picture. A big delay getting into dialysis, while waiting to figure out if the MRI machine would be available. When the MRI machine finally became available, they go the pictures, but the Ortho doc was too busy with other surgeries to read the MRI pics. Because of all that, her foot surgery has been deferred until tomorrow. She feels the foot has been getting worse very quickly today, and this was important time lost. Infections can move so fast, and we've seen that happen more than once, that it's amazing to me when things like this happen.

K at St Jo

Day 1 at Exempla St Joseph Hospital. I visited with K in her room late tonight. She's on an IV broad spectrum antibiotic. I think because this is an issue with infection, they gave her a private room, so maybe she'll be able to sleep through the night during this stay. The doc thinks she'll be there at least several days. The idea is to enforce the "stay off your feet!" directive she's supposed to have been following for the past several weeks. It seems like some surgery is required, but there's no discussion of it yet, aside from K asking about it. With any luck, having the pressure off her feet will help allow them to heal. Her dialysis center knows she's not coming anytime soon. It snowed several inches tonight, but our new CR-V made the trip to and from the hospital an easy and safe proposition. Mandy was disappointed that she had to stay in her nice warm bed in the car while I was up visiting K, but with the issue being infection, it didn't seem appropriate to take her up.

K to Hospital

K called from the cardio doc's office. She noticed this morning that her foot wounds are looking worrisome. The cardio doc agrees, and is making arrangements to admit her to the hospital. She'll need to be in a special area, because of her recent antibiotic use. They won't be able to admit her until 4pm, so Freddie will take her home for an hour, so she can grab a change of clothes before they go back for the 4pm admission.

K Driving Again

K drove herself to dialysis for the first time today. The RTD Access-A-Ride messed up somehow, and didn't show up at the appointed time this morning. It's clear she's feeling some independence, since she just called me from Whole Foods to ask what I wanted her to bring home for dinner.

My cold isn't letting go as quickly as I'd hoped. I woke up very wiped out this morning, and just shut off the alarm and went back to sleep. I dragged myself into work just before lunchtime, having missed a couple of important meetings. But I sure felt a lot better for the extra sleep!

Dorothy's the Focus

I'm not putting much energy into our K&S blog, because most of my available time is going into getting K to and from Dialysis, and making sure the blog for our niece Dorothy is up to date. In case you haven't checked over there, Dorothy's come out of the coma, and has been making incremental progress. They had planned to move her to a rehabilitation facility early next week. She had a setback on Friday, when they discovered her jaw was broken in two places, but they're planning surgery for that on Sunday morning. The jaw will probably delay her move to rehab.

K's still struggling with 3 foot wounds on her right foot, and now one wound on her left foot. The first wound on her heel has indirectly caused the other three, since she's been trying to keep off the heel, which puts more stress on the other parts of her right foot, and on the left foot. The month of dialysis has removed a lot of the swelling that was caused by the failing kidneys. She likes to say she's lost "three Mandys" to the dialysis, and is working on a fourth.

Dorothy in ER

Our niece Dorothy went into the E.R. at Twin Cities Hospital in Templeton Friday night, after a car accident. She's in a coma, and her condition is very serious. She can use all the good wishes and prayers you have to give. Her Mom asked me to create a blog for her recovery status. The address is http://dorothyhk.blogspot.com and it's also listed off to the side under my favorite links.

Back From CA

I was out on the west coast last week, supporting a tanking test on Friday. I got home safe on Sunday night, with no big taxicab adventure this time, other than taking a completely different route than I asked for. I felt a sore throat coming on Friday morning, and wondered if it was just from the cold moist coastal morning air, but no such luck. I've been home sick with a nasty cold for the past three days. Sore throat turned into a runny nose and headache, a touch of Laryngitis, and a lot of coughing, especially at night, making it impossible to sleep. I probably caught it before traveling on Tuesday. My first business trip in two years, and I come down with a cold while I'm out there. Dang. I thought about going into work this week, but I really am miserable, and also trying to avoid exposing my coworkers to it.

Approved for Transplant

Here's some really good news: K has had several communications over the past week, with various transplant people. While I was on travel, she found out she was officially approved to be on the Univ of Chicago transplant waiting list for a kidney/pancreas transplant. The opportunity could come as early as 3-6 months from now. The call could come at 10pm one night, and she'd need to be in Chicago by 7am the next morning. Special transportation arrangements would have to be made. She'd be in the hospital for the week after the surgery, then would need to be in Chicago, with a full-time companion, for the next 3 months. The logistics of that are a little overwhelming. Several coworkers have suggested that I telecommute from Chicago, so that I wouldn't have to take a leave of absence from work for that entire time, but my manager seems less than enthusiastic about that idea. Over the next few months, we'll be trying to identify people other than myself who would be willing to travel out and spend a week or more with her.

She also found out during the past week, that Kaiser is considering a relationship with a transplant facility here in the Denver area, so there's also a possibility that she may be able to get her surgery here, and not have to travel at all. That would be a huge relief. All very exciting news.

Post ER Update

Several people asked about what happened after K's trip to the E.R. last week. The visit and related treatments seemed to help with the symptoms at the time. The fever stayed down, and the chills went away. We're still not sure what that was all about, unless it was the beginning of an infection, and the I.V. antibiotic she's been getting has knocked it down. Or maybe she was just fighting something like a cold without other symptoms. Her big heel wound, which the E.R. doc said didn't look bad, because it wasn't deep, does look like it's healing up slowly. Unfortunately, while favoring her heel, she's developed two other wounds on the ball of her foot - one from pressure, and the other from tearing off skin while removing a bandage. So now we're watching three wounds. Sheesh.

K to ER

K got chills and a fever that was rising through 101.5 late Friday evening / early Saturday morning. We were quite concerned about the wound on her heel and possible infection. After discussing it with a Kaiser nurse, by 2am we were on the way to St Joseph ER. They ran several tests but couldn't adequately explain the fever. The good news was that none of the tests showed anything serious. They gave her intravenous antibiotics to address a suspected infection.

We took the dog with us, so I could run out to the car on occasion, and get my Mandy fix, as well as not having to worry about how she might be doing, in case K had to stay in the hospital for an extended period. By 6am they were talking about very good test results, and discharging her to home, and to her afternoon dialysis session. Mandy snoozed through the entire event, wrapped up snug and warm in her bed in the back seat of my car. We left for home around 7:30am, and stopped at Burger King and bought egg sandwich breakfasts for the three of us. We napped for a couple of hours, then I took K to dialysis at noon, where they gave her more IV antibiotics. She said she had one of the best dialysis experiences this time, probably because she asked for another more experienced technician to poke her arm this time.

New Year's Day Walk

Mandy and I dropped K off for her first dialysis session of the new year, then we stopped at Sterne Park and walked around in the snow for awhile. The lake was frozen over, and dozens of geese were comfortably parked there, enjoying the chilly blue sky day. Mandy's feet got cold about halfway around the park, so I carried her for awhile, then we came upon a great migration of geese, all heading for our location, as some friendly locals dropped by with a 50 pound sack of corn for them to munch on.