Sleeping restfully

Sorry I haven't been able to update, it was a bit of a busy unsteady emotional night to be quite honest. He came out of surgery very cold, still loosing a lot of blood out of his drain, he had myoglobin (which could cause damage into the kidneys) in his urine and he wasn't making very much urine, and he hadn't woken up at all.

I sent Mom and Dad home to finally get a good nights sleep and I stayed here with David. The nurse was great last night and let me ask her a ton of questions. The doctors that were there with him were great as well and let me ask them questions and they explained to me their thinking and their plan for getting all the above issues fixed.

Last night around 8/9 the drain from his back slowed down and they were able to stop infusing it back to him. He also started to warm up from the warming blanket and that also helped with the bleeding.

They were making his body alkalitic to help counteract the myoglobin from settling into his kidneys which would cause kidney damage. They said that could have been from a blood reaction, but we will never know because he got about 5 pints of blood from the hospital and then on top of that they re infused his own blood. This morning his urine is MUCH MUCH clearer and the amount is picking up.

His blood counts are pretty much steady, still low, but they said that they are going to wait to see if it increases because his blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, urine output are all good. Sometimes when a patient gets a lot of IV fluid it can make the blood get diluted and therefore make the labs look low.

Early this morning he woke up and looked at me and I was able to easily calm him down and he went back to sleep. We are trying not to stimulate him much because of course when he wakes up he coughs because of the tube which can also be kind-of scary. We just want him to rest and that is what he is doing.

The plan is to keep him intubated at this point at least till late this afternoon for several reasons. First, pain control because he can be given more medicine at a safe rate. We are hoping that they will keep him intubated overnight just so he can rest and get the pain meds he needs.
Second, they are just waiting to make sure that he doesn't have what is called 3rd spacing go into his lungs(from all the fluid he's gotten), but I really don't anticipate that because he was very dehydrated before surgery so he needed the fluid.

He is doing better this morning, but please keep praying that he will continue to improve and that the removal of the breathing tube will be at the right time and he will tolerate it well. We also are concerned about pain control after surgery and we know it will be hard on him, especially with the hip.

By the way, if any of you want to visit, please give us a call on one of our cell phones and we can meet you at the front entrance.

Mom-919-862-6906
Dad-919-302-6637
Amanda- 919-791-8080

By HIS grace,
The Bradley Family