Saturday Update For Ben

Ben was awake when I come into his room and responsive to me and his nurse. His vitals were half good, half bad. His heart rate was 85 and his breathing was 19, but his blood pressure was 73/38 (but they had just repositioned him and that lowers it for a few minutes and usually comes right back up). His body temperature was only 94.6° which is "hypothermal". He is anemic so they were giving him another unit of blood while I was there. His blood level is 7.5 and it should be 11 to 13. He is no longer on the blood pressure raising medications. They really want his B/P to get normal on its own as much as possible because the meds are not really good for you. They can weaken your kidneys and Ben's kidneys are already not functioning as well as they should. To raise his body temperature, they put several thermal blankets on him and then put a full body heating pad on top of them. He kept pushing them off saying he was hot, but when they checked his temperature, it had only gotten up to 95.9° before I left. I think he didn't like the weight of them on his body. They put a rectal thermometer in him to monitor his temperature while they have him under the heating pad. Their goal is to get him up to 99.5°. His nurse Alana told me that his abdominal pressure is good even though I thought his belly looked a little bloated. She said he is in the "acceptable" range. She said he is still getting stool in his colostomy bag. The only problem they are having with the bag is that it doesn't want to stay adhered to his skin. Ben has always had a problem with any kind of adhesives irritating his skin and causing it to turn red. Because of the skin irritation, the adhesive on the bag won't stick to his skin. It keeps coming lose and then the bag leaks. He still is not getting much urine so his limbs, hands and feet are still bloated. They are giving him meds to try to make him pee more. Ben was actually more alert today than he was yesterday. He kept getting mad at me because he would pull the thermal blankets off and I'd put them right back on him, so he'd "silently" yell at me and give me dirty looks. I'd just laugh at him and tell him that it was good for him to get mad because maybe it would help his B/P go up plus it shows that he is having some kind of "feelings" and is reacting to them. They gave him an injection of Vitamin K to try to help his blood thicken up some. Around 12:30, Ben started to fall asleep so I decided to leave. I'd been there for 4 hours by that time. When I left his vitals were….heart rate 84, breathing 19, blood pressure 93/51.