Tuesday, July 8th

Morning update: Sorry there wasn't an update posted last night. Today Dave's white blood count is 1,500 which is down from yesterday morning, but up from last night (1,100). His temperature this morning is 101.7, this is better than yesterday as well. On Monday Dave received 2 units of blood. He started dialysis in the morning but it was stopped due to his blood pressure dropping to 79/50. The doctors are wanting to due dialysis today, but haven't decided if they will do HD (fast) or SLED (slow). Dave has a CT scan this morning at 9:00. This is something that he has been worrying about since last night because of the discomfort the contrast they put in his stomach causes. Please pray the CT scan will go well and not cause Dave to be anxious. Dr Young would like to remove 2 tubes depending on the results of the CT scan. Sometimes Dave's speech is slow, as he searches for the correct words to use. We have noticed the slower speech comes when he is in pain and when he is running a high temperature. They have assured us the slow speech will improve as his body continues to heal. This morning Dave had a painful bout with the hiccups for 45 minutes. As you can imagine with all the trauma, even something as "small" as a hiccup is excruciating.

9:00 AM
One of the Infectious Disease doctors just came in and said the blood culture is growing something. They will have to wait for the culture to continue growing before they will be able to decipher what is actually growing. Dave will have to go back on antibiotics. The doctors don't know what he was allergic to (causing the rash). Please pray for wisdom for the doctors in choosing the correct antibiotic. Dave's CT scan has been pushed back to 9:30 AM.

Evening update: After a second look of the cultures, the Infectious Disease doctors determined that there is NOT anything growing out of the blood cultures. Dr Rupp still feels that the low white blood count, high temperature (it reached 103.8 today!), and rash may be a result of a bad reaction to an antibiotic. Dr Rupp will do a biopsy of the rash.
The results of the CT scan done this morning show that everything looks basically the same, except the areas of fluid may be larger. Tomorrow they plan to culture these areas, possibly drain them or place drain tubes. Dave was on dialysis today for four hours before the machine clotted off. They plan to start dialysis again tomorrow and hope to have a longer run. Tonight Dr Young removed one drain tube. I believe that brings the total down to 6 tubes in Dave's abdomen. Dave's vitals remain stable, he is no longer on oxygen, but is still requiring ventilation treatments two out of every six hours. Please pray continue to pray for wisdom for the doctors and healing for Dave.