My Dad

I mentioned in a post a few days ago that my dad is in the hospital. My dad has chrones disease which has been the cause of several complications for him medically speaking. Twelve years ago, he had a liver transplant due to schlorosing colangiatis of the liver. For the most part, he's done extremely well. Since last fall, he's had occasional pains in his abdomen. The doctors ran several tests and could never find anything conclusive.

About two weeks ago, his belly was once again sore, he became bloated and began running a temperature. Upon calling the advice nurse at the hospital, he was instructed to come to the ER. So, my mom took him to the ER. He underwent more tests and finally, a CT scan showed he had a bowel blockage and he was admitted to the hospital. Initially, the doctors thought they could get the blockage to reverse itself with out surgery. By Monday, they gave up that hope and went in laparoscopically. They found that some scar tissue from him transplant had wrapped itself around the bowel and caused the blockage (thus causing the pain he occasionally felt last fall). Unfortunately, after the surgery his bowels still weren't working, so on

Wednesday, the surgeons decided to go back in, only this time, not laparoscopically, instead they made an incision. The surgeons took out his intestines, and went through them inch by inch looking for another blockage. They found none. So, they put him back together and sewed him up.

After surgery, he started to have some heart problems. He ended up being moved to the cardiac until because of atrial fibrillation and tachycardia. With the help of medications, they have been able to keep his heart rate under control.

Yesterday morning, he began to run a fever and his WBC were elevated. So, now he has an infection somewhere. They haven't been able to pin point the exact location/cause of the infection, but they are now treating him with some heavy-duty antibiotics, which they 'think' are working.

It's been so frustrating, one thing gets fixed, and then a new problem errupts.

We got our first bit of good news in several days today, they are going to start him on a liquid diet tomorrow and see if he can tolerate that. Anyways, it's been a long two-weeks (especially for my mom). We're hoping he'll make a full recovery and be able to come home soon.