Thursday Dr. Visit

I'm at the hospital this morning. It's back to a little more grim.

His Bili went up today, after that nice plateau, so he's still quite jaundice, and it means his liver isn't doing what they want it to.

His CT Scan yesterday showed the liver at about the same size and the tube to the gallbladder a little swollen, which they haven't seen before.

The kidneys also don't look good--I think based on labs. They are giving him more diuretic to help get off the fluid and encourage the kidneys, and laxatives to get more ammonia off and keep him 'with it'.

Dad has a very large blister on the top of his foot, it looks awful and the docs checked it, but didn't say anything.

His throat has blisters, as does his mouth, and he said it hurt. (I guess that is fairly normal with chemo.) He couldn't really swallow his pills this morning; he was chewing them. (Grandma, I thought of you and the faces you make when you have to chew pills.) They are having a Speech Therapist come to do an evaluation on his tongue and speech to see if something needs to be done about it.

His arms and hands still look about normal, but legs and feet are swollen.

They are doing another echo of his heart, they think it's not doing well again.

His lungs sound like they may have more fluid, and another...(X-ray?)...will be done to check that.

He's somewhat alert but very sleepy. He told the doctors that today felt a little worse than yesterday.

He's got more platelets on his IV pole. Along with lots of other bags...they're keeping him on antibiotics and now they'll do anti fungal too; he keeps getting fevers.

He doesn't complain about pain. And he told me he'd do whatever they ask him to.
I hope this really is the worst of it all. He's sick; he's been sick for a long time now--and he still has so far to go.