Daddy is very tired today. Mom and I had missed Dr. Chen this morning so he called around 8:45. He said that Daddy's kidney function was creeping up, but he thought it may be because of the Albumin and Bumex that he's on. Daddy's red blood count is down to 7.9 and Dr. Chen wants to give him blood. He said he wants to see the count at 10 or above and that this will greatly reduce how tired and weak Daddy is. This of course creates additional concerns/problems with fluid retention and heart and lung function so Dr. Chen has requested a consult with the kidney doctors. As soon as he hears from them, we will know if he's getting the blood or not. Dr. Chen also had an Endocrinologist evaluate Daddy. He said that Daddy does not qualify for an insulin pump because medicare does not cover type 2 diabetes. Therefore we will just have to continue managing the best we can.
The Respiratory Therapist took Daddy off the CPAP machine from 10:30 - 1:00 today. He's been coughing a lot and has a bunch of mucus, but at least it's been a productive cough and he's able to get a lot of the mucus up. His O2 levels stayed pretty good off the CPAP. Several times it dropped down into the 80's, but went back up pretty quickly.
The Speech Pathologist came in this morning and worked with Daddy and had him do quite a few different exercises with his mouth and tongue. Daddy did very well, but he's so weak right now that it really tired him out.
The nurse came in around 1:00 and said that Dr. Chen had put in the orders for Daddy to get blood, so she will start that in a little while. We just pray that it will not create any problems with is heart and lungs.
Daddy's sleeping very soundly right now and hopefully Mom can get in a short nap this afternoon too. I'll update tomorrow unless something changes this evening.
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