Thursday, September 6th – Day +108

Hi Everyone,

First I want to tell you that Mom is doing good.  She may be going home in a couple weeks.  Hopefully, it will be a welcome change for her!!

Now for Mike.  Yesterday I went to visit him after stopping to see mom in Flushing.  When I got to his room he was having a terrible day.  His nurse informed me that he was on the schedule for surgery on his bladder and that he was in a lot of pain because of the BK Virus.  So, my friend Karen and I held Mike’s hands and tried to help him breath through his bad times with pain and waited for the OR to come get him.  The nurse had even taught Mike how to breath like women do when they are in labor.  Karen and I told her she should have given him an epidoral too so the pain would be less noticable!!!!  Sisters can be soooo helpful.

Anyway, we finally headed to the holding room about 5:30p.m. and he was taken to surgery a little after 6.  The doc told us that it may be as long as an hour but could be less depending on what they found going on in his bladder.  So Karen and I waited and waited.  I asked about him at 8:15 and was told that the surgery started at 6:34.  At 8:30 I ask to have a call put in to the OR to find out what was happening.  They waid that there was a hugh, very solid blood blot in his bladder that they were trying to remove.  At 9 the head Urologist came out and told me that it could be another two hours.  I told him that I needed to leave to go home but wanted him to call me no matter how late it got.  He called my home at about 10:50 and told Bruce that they couldn’t do any more on the blood clot that night because Mike was loosing too much blood and so it was too risky.

This morning I came home from teaching at 10:30am to find a message from the hospital requesting my permission to do another proceedure on Mike.  I called and they explained that they wanted to insert a tube into each of his kidneys so drain them so that his bladder could have a rest.  I told them fine and at 4:30 this afternoon they did that proceedure.  I talked to a nurse tonight and Mike was back to his room and resting.

When I talked to his nurse earlier she told me that Mike was very, very sick right now.  I told her that we were aware of how serious all this is especially because of the high risk for infection.  However, we don’t really have a choice.  He couldn’t go on like he was with his bladder problems.   I also talked to a BMT doc who answered other questions I had.  He did say it will take a couple days to see if the tubes and kidneys are working fine.  His kidney levels were really high and that wasn’t good either but they couldn’t give him meds right now because he couldn’t handle them this soon.  They are keeping on top of everything though.

I am going to head to Ann Arbor on Saturday morning just to hang out with him.  His nurse said that these tubes are ridgid and can be very uncomfortable.  Just one more thing for old Mike to deal with!!

Keep praying.  He is not out from under any of this at this point!! I was so hopefully that he would be better soon but I was told this  will take a long time.  So, hang in there with all of us, but expecially with Mike.  He needs all the prayers and support he can get right now!!

Sorry, I didn’t blog last night but I was too tired and wasn’t sure that I could tell you much.  Today, after talking to the different staff people I had a better understanding.

love, Ann

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