Cleveland Clinic Update 4-19

It’s pretty early in the morning, but it’s technically the 19th now. As before, I’ll add to this post throughout the day if I get any news, and Karen doesn’t need me. This is the third post since she was admitted to the hospital. If you haven’t read the others you may need to glance back at them.

12:25AM

The first big news is that Karen’s hemoglobin has leveled off a little, and didn’t drop much over the last 12 hours. Also, Karen managed to down most of the goop they make you ingest before a colonoscopy. Hopefully it was enough to allow them to find the problem. It’s bound to be a long night for her. I’m not sure I’ll have an update until later in the day, but will post when I have something to share.

7:00AM

Karen has a colonoscopy sometime today, hopefully in the AM. Recent lab work suggests the bleeding has reduced. Her platelets have been dropping but her hemoglobin levels are still holding at a safe level, relatively speaking. So, a few things are progressing. She still has high ammonia levels in her blood but they are working on that. That was most likely what was making it hard for her to communicate. As the levels have gone down, and her hemoglobin up, she’s become more responsive. Things have been beating her up, but she’s fighting like hell, and doing an admirable job overcoming the obstacles. Hoping for some positive news from the colonoscopy. The hope is that they find where she’s bleeding and that they can address the problem during the procedure.

8:15PM

Today was a difficult one for Karen.

The bleeding has subsided to a level where they don’t consider it to be critical, but she is still bleeding from a couple of places. They still haven’t found the source of the problem in the GI tract, but see a lot of trouble spots that have been bleeding, and may start again. They are going to look at the upper GI tract to try to find where it’s bleeding, and because of the smaller amount they think it may be possible to control.

She is also bleeding from the cancer in her abdomen, but they can’t do anything about this. This is not critical either at this point, but caution that this is likely to change.

Unfortunately, her liver and kidneys are failing. These are not critical, this second, but something they can’t improve. They can only treat some of the symptoms, temporarily.

That’s a lot of things that are not critical, individually, but indicate that her body is failing, and it appears very rapidly. They are working to make her comfortable and stable.

We’re going to size things up day to day over the next week. The goal is to stabilize her enough so she can go home. She’s coherent right now, but as the liver problems pop up she sometimes has spells where she has troubles focusing. Some of the medications can do that too but the doctors are being careful to not over medicate, always listening to what Karen wants, even when sometimes it’s nothing. She’s receiving the very best care. The nurses and doctors are all fantastic, and very attentive.

We’re having a challenging time, and sometimes need just to be together without other people around. Reaching out is wonderful, but please be understanding if I don’t write a lot of responses and messages. I’ll be attentive to the blog and hope to post something daily.

Thank you for all the love and support. <3