Danny started off the day today exhausted but OK. The transplant team met and came to a loose consensus that Danny may be stable enough to go home Friday and wait on a donor heart from there. The plan du jour is to wait until the first week in October at which time they will do the LVAD. Are you confused by that timeline? Before today, the plan was mid-September for the mechanical assist device, and before that the plan was in about a week. That's what I mean by fluid: the plans are as fluid as Danny's condition. The ups and downs are physically exhausting for him, but we both feel emotionally drained as well.
About the time we sort of got our heads wrapped around that plan (going home on an IV life-saving heart failure medicine is scary) Danny went downhill again. He started dry-heaving, which is what happens when he has too much fluid. You see, Danny doesn't hold fluid in the normal heart-failure places...legs, neck, etc...he holds it mostly in his belly. Dry-heaving is miserable and leaves him weaker than before. He is currently running a low-grade fever and has a horrible headache. The answer for excess fluid is Lasix, but Danny has left-sided kidney failure because of a clot. Lasix is hard on the kidneys because it causes them to produce fluid at such a fast rate. Dropping fluid quickly also lowers his BP, therefore making him even more nauseated. There is no easy solution for Danny's fluid retention. The kidney and heart work together to handle fluid, and it can be a vicious cycle.
This evening the thoracic surgeon is rethinking the LVAD for early October and now the date he says is Sept.17. See what I mean about fluid? It's just day by day here...My prayer this second is that we would not waste the opportunity the Lord is giving us to trust Him with each fluid second instead of trusting in plans we make. James 1:2-4 says: "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing". Keep reading...James is a wonderful book!!
Thank you for reading and for your prayers and support! We are humbled and blessed by how many people are reading this (over 1000)and praying! I included a picture of all of us... please pray... we are missing our kids, and they are missing us.
As you can imagine, the cost of a heart transplant is staggering. Should the Lord lead you to help us financially, our contact info at PayPal is helpdannysauer@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment