Tom was still in ER when I had to leave at 12:30 to go to the building next door for an appointment. Naturally Tom's doctor arrived while I was gone (if I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all). When I got to his room, he was alert and talking sensibly. He still had not had any ammonia medicine. They gave him the first dose about 3 pm! It's weird how he was clear headed without the medicine. He's a little groggy tonight but is telling me details about the address Obama gave yesterday. That tells me he's still pretty sick :-). He NEVER listens to any presidential address!
He's very hungry and thirsty and was worried that his kidneys had shut down again. I assured him that was not the case and they are working fine. He's on a different floor than normal, beds are in short supply here. It's kind of a pain to re-train everyone but it might also help to have "new eyes" too. They have been shorthanded today but hopefully will have a full staff tonight.
They are monitoring his sodium and protein which is making Mealtime difficult because he can't always have everything he wants and it frustrates him.
For now I am relieved he is here where he has help and I'm not worried about what is wrong or what will happen at home. Tomorrow I really need to work. I've been out of the office for 3 days and have a whole bunch to do. Of course, Tom wants me here - he gets so bored, and he has trouble using the remote or phone from time to time. Maybe he'll get some physical therapy.
His doctor sent lab reports from last week to UAB to see if they would raise his meld score but none of the tests were complete. The charge nurse today has made sure that all tests will be run every day and we can send those to UAB as well to see what they will do. I talked to the blue cross case manager today about the repeated hospital stays and his score being so low. She is reaching out to UAB just to make sure they know about all of the trips to the hospital. It seems there is a disconnect - maybe because we are in a different city. I would have thought Tom's doc called them each time to discuss things and I'm not sure why that doesn't happen. Hopefully there will be more communication in the future. I told her if I needed to be doing something more to please let me know. I'll be happy to call them each time but I rarely talk to a person and usually leave a voicemail message. We go down there Ina couple of weeks and I was planning to discuss these things with the doc then.
Ok that's enough for now. Going to try to do a little bit of work tonight. I'll post again tomorrow. Thanks for praying, I hope the docs can figure this out!
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