The Fight Continues

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers for Dad. It has been a tough week since last Wednesday. All three kids managed to come up and give Dad the strength to continue to fight.

He is still in the ICU with 3 infections, two in his lungs and 1 in his blood. Dad was fairly stable this week, but still having trouble breathing and was not digesting food. A CT Scan was ordered to check his gut and found no problem. Medication was given to "wake up" his digestive tract and he has begun to digest again, thank god. But while they figured out the digestion issue, the scan showed something surprising: He seemed to have an empty space where the left lung should be. The X-ray had not shown anything, so the Dr. was a bit surprised. The empty space contained infected fluid and food remains that was flattening Dad's lung. They decided to insert a tube into his lung cavity to drain out the liquid and air so that the lung could expand back into that space. They will do another CT Scan on Monday to see if the lung is in fact expanding again. Mom said today his breathing was already much improved. He is on the respirator with 35% oxygen now which is much better than last week when he was on 100%.

It has been extremely frustrating for all of us, but especially for Dad as he was just about ready to move down to the Bay Area to begin the next phase of rehabilitation. This has set him back to square 1.  I do not need to tell you all how strong-willed my Dad is, so this set back will hopefully only be a bump in the long road. Again, thanks for all of the good will; it continues to help dad and all of the rest of us get through this.