Mon 9/10/2007 7:31 AM

Good Morining All,

Well, Anna and I had to take Dad back to the hospital yesterday.  He was making the gurggling sound when he was breathing.  Liz had shut off the feeding pump for most of the morning and gave his pills at 10 am and kept it off till noon.  At noon she started the feeding and within 20 minutes he was breathing bad.  So Anna and I decided to ship him off to the hospital. 

The breathing got better, but his blood pressure was way low and his finger tips on this right hand were turning blue.  The ER doc said it was his lack of circulation and to try to stimulate his hand by rubbing it and getting the blood down to it.  They started him on a drug called dopamine to try to elevate the blood pressure to get the top number over 100.  Well it did that for a few times, but his blood pressure was running about 94/50 for most of the time.  They admitted him to the ICU unit.  Their policies at this hospital says that they must be in either ICU or the ER to get this drug and to titrate it. 

What made us feel bad about this was that our nurses couldn't stay with him as usual.  Nancy came up to sit with him and we had to take her back home (she rides the bus to get to our house).  Anna and I got kicked out of the ICU at 7pm last night.  They have strict visiting hours there and they only make exceptions when the patient is really bad (as they did when Mom was there). 

Also, they gave him a 1000ml of saline to try to boost up his blood pressure and ran it into him in about an hour or so.  Anna and I were worried about him filling up with fluids and no one being there to watch him.  I did read up on the dopamine last night and it did say one of the side effects was that it causes increased urine output, which is good for him too.

I called this am to check on him and they said he was very stable, blood pressure was still in the low 90's, he had been started on his feedings, they were taking his blood sugars, and he was not gurggling when he was breathing.

Our day nurse will stay most of the day with him.  The visiting hours are 9 am to 1 pm and 3 pm to 7 pm and 8pm to 9pm.  I will get there around 4 pm and Anna said she would do the 8pm to 9 pm shift.  It just makes me nervous that we don't have someone with him all the time.  I guess we have been pretty spoiled in the fact that every other time he has been in the hospital, we have had our staff there with him.  So when they transfer him to a regular room, we can get our staff back in there.

I will let you know of any new happenings. 

Love and hugs to all of you. 

 Mary