Today was Pop Pop’s 91st birthday, Mike. And today I had hoped that you would be able to grant his wish and give him a phone call for the day. Unfortunately, instead you had another setback.
I have been told time and again that there will be steps forward and backward during your fight against this disease. It is still devastating to get a phone call from ICU as I did again this morning. At least they weren’t calling to tell me to come in to possibly say goodbye to you… they called to say they wanted to put in a new chest tube because your lung had collapsed. I went in and saw your x-rays. Your right lung (same one as previously, and the same one that already has a chest tube on it) collapsed again. On the x-ray it looks like the edge of the lung is indented about an inch from the ribcage, but still connected to the ribcage at the top-so the top part isn’t collapsed.
The doctors inserted the chest tube but it did not immediately inflate your lung. However, your oxygen saturation, blood pressure and heart rate are good. So… they don’t want to mess with it too much or do anything too aggressive to re-inflate the lung. They said it may be a few days like that and it will be ok, however they would prefer if it does inflate of course.
So this was all very stressful once again. Today was your 25th day on the ventilator, and all the settings are up high again now. You are once again on 100% oxygen, and back up to taking 40 breaths per minute (650 ml. breaths) The pressure in is 40 and the PEEP is at 5, but you were doing more like 6.5 or so... I am telling you these things so that I have a record for myself, because I have been watching all of these things each day as they are reduced, and now up high again.
I hope tomorrow is better. I hope that your lung heals during the night. I had a long day with you today, Mike, and I played music for you on Jackie’s ipod while you had dialysis. When I finally left I felt very scared to go. It’s time for me to sleep now, and I have already called ICU twice tonight… your vitals are all still good.
Please heal tonight, Mike. Please let your body repair itself. God please heal my husband!
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