Ron is home

Tuesday morning Ron looked like death warmed over.

The first doctor in didn’t even suggest that Ron could or should go home as he still looked pretty bad that early in the morning. The other three doctors all came at just about the same time. The infection disease PA was first. She said that he was looking better and that Dr. Peterie (infection doc) would be by the afternoon and she passed Dr. Dan (cardiologist) in the doorway.

He said that Ron didn’t need to have a heart cath right now because of the infection but maybe in the future. The test results that he saw looked pretty good and the two EKGs he had were also good. He does have a skipped/dropped heartbeat but it’s not severe. He wants to see Ron in a week and asked Ron if he wanted to go home. Of course he said yes but it was up to me. I said if he continued to improve that I would be fine with it but if not, then I wanted him to not rush it.

Right behind him was Dr. Heady (ortho doctor). He was on his way out of town and said even if he wanted to operate on Ron that he couldn’t this week. Ron is already scheduled to see him on the 16th. He will decide then (maybe) if there’s still a need for more surgery.

So then the PA asked if we were going to go home after all and I said if things continued to improve. I said someone needed to write an order for the Foley to be removed though. LOL – they all forgot about it. Dr. Dan is the one who ordered it in but I don’t know who ordered it out.

The IV drip for the diuretic wasn’t supposed to end until 3:00 in the afternoon so I decided that waiting wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Dr. Peterie came in about 2:00 and was amazed at how much better Ron looked. He said Ron looked like a different person, to which he replied that he also felt like one. Doc said to go home and come see him in a week but to have blood work on Friday.

I could not believe how much total weight he has lost. He weighed in at 309 when he was admitted in March. He weighed 287 when he was discharged three days later (funny – in on Saturday night, out on Tuesday just like this time). He had been fluctuating between 276 and 285 since then and he just couldn’t seem to get below the 275 mark. He was admitted this time at 272 (hadn’t eaten much in several days since he was sick), lost 9 pounds the first night (down to 263) and lost 9 more pounds Monday night (down to 254). He hasn’t weighed 254 in years so although I know a lot of his loss right now is water, he’s also lost a great deal of muscle mass. He has very little belly and his arms and chest are much smaller. He was 252 this morning.

One of the diagnoses written on his discharge paper is “ortho-pancytopenia” and I’d never heard of it, so I looked it up. Didn’t find “ortho-“ but I did find Pancytopenia. It’s characterized by abnormal blood cells – white, red, and platelets. That made sense since that’s one of the things they’ve been telling us and thought it was from the Zyvox. I didn’t worry too much about it because Wikipedia says that a reaction to some drugs, including antibiotics. I'm just surprised that they would write something like that down and then not discuss it with us. I only found it on the sheet I'm to give the home health nurse. I made a copy for us, though.

I took him back to the ER last night because he thinks he’s gotten too much potassium flushed out of him and he’s having terrible muscle cramps, including his chest. They kept him long enough to make sure he was stable and then let him go. The ER doctor told him that he will have some more episodes of cramping but should level out. He’s lost so much weight so rapidly that his body is having trouble adjusting. His creatinine is up a bit but not dangerously.