About the same

Brody is about the same as in Trish's last post.

His pain seems a little bit worse overnight but it might be a matter of him getting "behind" while sleeping. He is getting a constant drip of morphine but he has a button to give himself a bolus of morphine when he needs it... the idea is to balance his pain control with depressing this breathing/respiratory function-- while sleeping he may have gotten behind a bit and then had pain that wasn't as easily controlled by the bolus.

His blood pressure has been kind of high and he started complaining about some left leg pain last night and today-- it is not all in the same place-- first his thigh, later his calf, later the back of his thigh. His electrolytes are out of whack a fair amount including his potassium and phosphorus which are low so these may be cramping pain. He is also still retaining a fair amount of fluid so they are trying to bring this down with lasix (a diuretic) and simultaneously giving him extra potassium. They have been upping his potassium via his IV TPN (TPN is total parenteral nutrition) which is giving him calories and some fats since he cannot eat yet.

To be sure he doesn't have a blood clot or anything causing the leg pain, he is getting a doppler ultrasound this afternoon to check his blood flow to his leg and while at it are going to look at his kidney also to see if the kidney is causing the high blood pressure.  Brody's nephrostomy tube is collecting a lot of urine.  The kidney is still certainly functioning well enough to produce plenty of urine.

They are also hoping the excess fluid has been the cause of his low oxygen levels (he still requires oxygen blowing near his face to help keep his oxygen levels up).  The excess fluid may have accumulated in his lungs.

We are all doing ok-- Brody has been watching alot of movies-- luckily we have out PS3 here and the wifi here is fast enough for us to stream both netflix and VUDU movies-- I was able to hook up the PS3 to the TV here via an HDMI and and a little bit of video gaming have helped him not be bored.  Trish and I both are feeling more rested.  We both managed to get a decent amount of sleep last night.

I think that is it for now--

I want to thank once again everyone that has stepped up to help us out with everything.

Bill