Finally Finished

March 23-26, 2017

Not much happened these days, except our usual trips to the infusion center. The Fentanyl patch seems to be doing it’s job and Den is mostly pain free.

March 27, 2017

Den had his usual IV therapy session today. This makes 10 weeks that he has been getting IV antibiotics. We don’t have an end date for his IV therapy, but we have an appointment to see the Infectious Disease doctor tomorrow. The nurses at the infusion center sent Den’s blood to the lab for his weekly tests. His INR was 3.6 (a little high) and his CRP is 1.1. I emailed the LVAD Team to see what they wanted me to do about Den’s INR. The response was to reduce his Warafrin by half for the next 2 days then back to his regular dose.

Den had a lot of back pain in the afternoon. He said that it was hard to move around with out pain. He took a Norco and it seemed to help.

March 28, 2017

Today is going to be a busy day. We started at the infusion center for Den’s IV therapy. From there we headed to the U of C for two more appointments.

First up was the Infections Disease doctor. We had lots of questions, since we had not seen Dr. Landon since Den had been in the hospital a month ago. We needed to get clearance for Den to get his pacemaker change done. The EP doctor would not touch him without an OK from her. We wanted to know when the IV therapy would end. She told us that since Den’s CRP had been low and steady for the last 2 weeks that Den was done with the IV therapy sessions!. Next, when would the PICC line be removed. She said that she could take that out before we left the office today! (Wow, things were really moving quickly!) She did tell us that Den would need to be on an antibiotic forever. This was due to the fact that we could not be sure that the infection didn’t settle on the LVAD pump. The way she described it was that the antibiotic could “wash” organs and tissue, but there was no way to “wash” the device. Den would start on the antibiotic tonight and take it twice a day for the rest of his life.  Dr. Landon asked us to have a blood draw today and come back in 4 weeks.

Our next stop was to see Dr. Mok in orthopedics. He said that the compression fracture was not caused by the blood infection. He suspected that Den had some weak bones and some osteoporosis. He said that we should ask the Pain Clinic about cement augmentation to fix the compression fracture. The only question for everyone was the same…how low could we safely take Den’s INR? We could find out the answer to that question tomorrow when we came in for Den’s appointment with the LVAD Team.

I left a message for Deb, the EP nurse, to let her know that Den was done with IV therapy. She left me a message to let me know that scheduling should be calling me to set up a date for Den’s pacemaker change.