Day By Day

November 8, 2016

The company that supplies Den’s sterile dressings for his drive line called today. They call every month to see if we need more supplies. I told them that we no longer need the daily dressing kits, but we need to change over to the weekly dressing kits. The reason for this is that we have now gone to changing Den’s dressing every 3-4 days. The daily dressings are solid with no way of seeing if there is any kind of infection beginning. The weekly dressings have a clear window that allows you to see the drive line in between changes. This lets me keep an eye on the drive line and know if there is a problem starting early. The rep said that they would contact the LVAD team to make the necessary change to the order and get it out to us as soon as possible. I sent an e-mail to the LVAD Team to let them know that someone would be contacting them about the change to ensure things went smoothly with the order change.

November 9, 2016

Today, Den has his one week follow up with Dr. Reidy. Den had his 2nd cataract surgery almost a week ago. He told us that everything in both eyes looked great and to start decreasing the drops over the next 2 weeks. This time the healing process would be much faster, since there was no stitch in the eye.

I told you a while back about Den’s upper bridge being loose. Den has an appointment with his niece, the dentist, to go over a plan to get it fixed. She looked his loose bridge over again. She said that a new permanent bridge was just not possible. Den would need a full upper denture plate. She said that she would call the oral surgeon that she uses for her patients about what extractions were going to be needed. This was not the news that Den wanted to hear. He has a lower denture already and is not looking forward to having another set of false teeth in his mouth.

November 16, 2016

This morning we went for Den’s weekly blood draw. Afterward, Den and I went out to breakfast at the diner across the street from the hospital. It is nice to feel we are normal again. We try to do “normal” things, even though Den is far from normal with his LVAD.

Later in the day, the LVAD team sent me an e-mail about his lab results. Den’s INR was 1.8 (too low/thick). So we increased his Warfrin to 9mg for tonight only. They were also concerned with his kidney function. His number was 1.5 (too high) and could be an early warning of kidney failure. So the decision was made to decrease his Bumex for a few days.