Sunday Update For Ben

Today turned out to be another discouraging day for me. Ben was sleeping when we came into his room. His vitals were good except he was running a fever of 100.3°. They were sending specimens out for cultures again. We could barely get him to try to open his eyes. He tried, but was not very successful. The respiratory therapist came in at 9:30 AM and put Ben on his breathing trial. He was not going to try it at first, but then decided to give it a try. Ben only did 2 1/2 hours before he was gasping for air and they put him back on the ventilator. The respiratory therapist told us that the surgeon had mentioned that they want to come in and checkout Ben's belly again. I know they've been taking ultrasounds and scans, but they seem really stumped as to why the distention will not go away. When Dr. Shin and the nurse Elesa came in this morning, I asked if they could put his bed in the "chair" position on the days he is more alert and awake because I think it would be easier for him to breathe without his stomach pressing against his lungs from lying down too much. They seemed to be open to the idea, but not today and Ben was totally "out-of-it" again. Ben is back on the TPN which makes his blood sugar go up and then they have to give him insulin again. They are giving him extra potassium because now they are giving him water and Lasix to make him urinate more. It's just a vicious circle. They put him on the Fibersource before and his sodium went up, so they stopped the Fibersource because they said he was no tolerating it as well as he was before. Certain things they give him makes his arms, hands and legs swell, then they give him other things and the swelling goes down some but then causes other problems. Everything seems to make his stomach bloat. They have been suctioning out his stomach fluids, but his stomach is still huge. There does not seem to be a happy medium. The way he was today, I do NOT see him being moved to an outside unit for a long time as he seems too unstable to me. I really have the feeling that these Kaiser doctors are totally stumped with Ben's case. I felt the Henry Mayo hospital doctors had a better idea of what was going on and I also feel that if Ben had not been transferred to Kaiser from Henry Mayo that he would have been home weeks ago. I really with Kaiser was NOT the only health plan Lockheed offers to me that I can afford. This is why I never wanted to have Kaiser Insurance for all those years I was working at Lockheed. They "claim" that Kaiser is one of the highest rated hospitals for its care and for its doctors, but I've always felt they are one of the worst. We only stayed 3 hours at the hospital today as Ben was so out-of-it that he didn't even know we were in his room. I think this latest fever has gotten him down. His nurse said that after she gets all of the specimens for running the cultures, she would give him some Tylenol. So all in all, this was NOT a good day.