Update on medical emergencies

Kim is still not totally out of danger, but doing better. Doc pulled her off of the heart meds, but her blood pressure is dropping, if it drops much more, she will need to go back on. As of 945, her blood pressure is stabilizing, and hopefully will not have to go back on.

Deb and I finally got a better understanding of the whole situation. It was basically a perfect storm of issues causing an emergency. First, the migrane medication dulled the normal pain of a severe kidney infection. Also, because of her throat problems last week she was on steroids. These suppressed her immune system. When the infection started, it was able to increase unnoticed. Wednesday morning, when the pain was intense she went in to the ER. When tests were done, the tests came back slightly high, but didnt indicate the severity. The docs knew there was some infection so started an antibiotic. The antibiotics started killing the bacteria. Due to the dead bacterial bodies breaking down, this can cause a shock to the system. This started causing the issues with her breathing and heart. The docs indicated tonight that it was a gram negative bacteria, possibly a mutated e-coli or pseudomonas. They are running a LOT of tests, and have an infectious disease specialist on the case. What they DONT want to find is a bacteria that I cant remember the name of-starts with P-that is a stone causing bacteria. The bacteria forms a stone, and then other bacteria lives in the stone crystal lattices. If she has this it will be difficult for her kidneys to be "disinfected", and her recovery will be much slower. She may be in ICU for 24-72 hours, and in the hospital for at least a week. Due to the risk of a major backslide, she is still in critical to guarded condition but at least we are headed in the right direction.

Deb just found some statistics on gram negative sepsis. It accounts for 1% of admissions, but is fatal in 50-70% of the cases. The bacteria respond to antibiotics, but the system is overwhelmed and shuts down. This is what was happening to Kim, but we have hopes she has beaten it.

Now the grandson. We have a report that he is doing better, and there is hope that surgery will not be necessary.

2 for 2 looking up, we could not ask for better news. Maybe tonight we can get a good nights sleep.