Update on My Leading Man ~ and thanks to all my FList!
As devsgma hoped, "No news is good news" ~ things have improved ever so much since my last post.
As you know from my last post, Leading Man ("LM") was admitted last Friday night to our local and fairly new hospital where he was put on ICU care. The hospital is new enough and small enough that they don't move you from room to room depending on your level of care, which was a blessing since I would have probably been a good bit more panic-stricken. I knew blood clots in the lung were bad -- the fact that the emergency room physician started his explanation of LM's CT scan with "Whoah" was also a good tip -- but I had no idea how dead LM should have been given that he'd had the clots for at least 10 days before going to the hospital. His clots were literally everywhere, including a big, fat, juicy one in his aorta. The pulmonologist let me see the CT scan on Saturday ~ cool, if sobering. His pulse oxygenation level Friday night was 83%. Normal is between 95 and 100%; below 92 or 93%; gets a few raised eyebrows. Below 85% is, as I understand it, Not Good.
So right onto major blood thinners (Heparin intravenously and Coumadin orally, for those keeping score at home), oxygen (obviously), and more electronic leads, clips and doo-dads than you can shake a stick at.
The emergency room doctor told us that we were in the enviable position of not needing to be hysterical as the terrifying part of LM's ordeal occurred before we knew we should have been really worried. Once he was diagnosed, all we had to do was watch the saline and medicine drip into his veins.
He improved from ICU to telemetry (monitoring of his vital signs remotely, but still continually) sometime between late Saturday and early Sunday; by Monday night he had recovered enough to be considered "medical" which I believe meant he was sick enough to justify taking up a bed but no longer particularly interesting. Boring, in this case, was most definitely where we wanted to be.
He was released yesterday (Wednesday), once the anti-coagulant level in his blood reached the intended target (again, for those keeping your scorecards updated, his INR level his 2.3, between 2 and 3 as desired). His pulse ox. level was between 93 and 94%, and while his blood pressure became weirdly erratic while in the hospital, it's responding well to low-dose medication (20 mg of Lisinopril) and if LM loses a little weight, he'll probably not need to continue it.
Since it's been at least 10 years since LM has had a check-up, I figured I'd better strike while the proverbial iron was hot; he's getting a full work-up Monday morning. As LM has pointed out, there's probably not much left for the doctor to check ~ he's had more blood drawn than the local blood bank in Transylvania ~ but there are a few nooks and crannies that haven't been thoroughly poked and/or prodded, so let's take care of that, hmm?
We have no idea what caused all these clots to form in the first place. He had a second CT scan of his lower torso, looking for some huge malignancy that might be generating lots of clots, and all the other obvious culprits seem to have been eliminated. We're still waiting on the more sophisticated (read: expensive and slow) genetic tests, but it's possible we'll never have a definitive answer.
All I know is that I'm incredibly thankful that he's still on this side of the dirt. He may be a butt-head, but he's my butt-head. I'd miss him terribly.
Thank you ALL for your wonderful thoughts, prayers and kind comments. I can't tell you how much it meant to me.
As you know from my last post, Leading Man ("LM") was admitted last Friday night to our local and fairly new hospital where he was put on ICU care. The hospital is new enough and small enough that they don't move you from room to room depending on your level of care, which was a blessing since I would have probably been a good bit more panic-stricken. I knew blood clots in the lung were bad -- the fact that the emergency room physician started his explanation of LM's CT scan with "Whoah" was also a good tip -- but I had no idea how dead LM should have been given that he'd had the clots for at least 10 days before going to the hospital. His clots were literally everywhere, including a big, fat, juicy one in his aorta. The pulmonologist let me see the CT scan on Saturday ~ cool, if sobering. His pulse oxygenation level Friday night was 83%. Normal is between 95 and 100%; below 92 or 93%; gets a few raised eyebrows. Below 85% is, as I understand it, Not Good.
So right onto major blood thinners (Heparin intravenously and Coumadin orally, for those keeping score at home), oxygen (obviously), and more electronic leads, clips and doo-dads than you can shake a stick at.
The emergency room doctor told us that we were in the enviable position of not needing to be hysterical as the terrifying part of LM's ordeal occurred before we knew we should have been really worried. Once he was diagnosed, all we had to do was watch the saline and medicine drip into his veins.
He improved from ICU to telemetry (monitoring of his vital signs remotely, but still continually) sometime between late Saturday and early Sunday; by Monday night he had recovered enough to be considered "medical" which I believe meant he was sick enough to justify taking up a bed but no longer particularly interesting. Boring, in this case, was most definitely where we wanted to be.
He was released yesterday (Wednesday), once the anti-coagulant level in his blood reached the intended target (again, for those keeping your scorecards updated, his INR level his 2.3, between 2 and 3 as desired). His pulse ox. level was between 93 and 94%, and while his blood pressure became weirdly erratic while in the hospital, it's responding well to low-dose medication (20 mg of Lisinopril) and if LM loses a little weight, he'll probably not need to continue it.
Since it's been at least 10 years since LM has had a check-up, I figured I'd better strike while the proverbial iron was hot; he's getting a full work-up Monday morning. As LM has pointed out, there's probably not much left for the doctor to check ~ he's had more blood drawn than the local blood bank in Transylvania ~ but there are a few nooks and crannies that haven't been thoroughly poked and/or prodded, so let's take care of that, hmm?
We have no idea what caused all these clots to form in the first place. He had a second CT scan of his lower torso, looking for some huge malignancy that might be generating lots of clots, and all the other obvious culprits seem to have been eliminated. We're still waiting on the more sophisticated (read: expensive and slow) genetic tests, but it's possible we'll never have a definitive answer.
All I know is that I'm incredibly thankful that he's still on this side of the dirt. He may be a butt-head, but he's my butt-head. I'd miss him terribly.
Thank you ALL for your wonderful thoughts, prayers and kind comments. I can't tell you how much it meant to me.