Please Pray- Phil Unstable

Please pray right now. Beth and I got a call this morning at 8:15ish from Phil's nurse, Tammy, telling us that he is unstable- his blood pressure was low and they have him on the most oxygen possible and his saturations were in the high 70-low 80 percent. We came up to the hospital. He was not coding or anything they just wanted to let us know that he wasn't doing well.

They have him on medications to keep his blood pressure up. He is maxed out on what they can do on the ventilator and he still isn't saturating well- only in the 80 percent range- and he is breathing very hard. They are trying to figure out what is going on. There are a couple possibilities: infection, blood clot that went to his lungs (pulmonary embolus), volume depletion, acid build-up from his kidneys. So now they are doing a lot of tests to try and figure out what is going on.

Infection: He ran a low grade fever overnight. They removed the catheter in his groin yesterday that they do dialysis through because it may be the source of the infection. They sent it to the lab so they can culture the tip.

Pulmonary Embolism: When they did an ultrasound to look for blood clots, they found a small one in his groin where the dialysis catheter had been. This is so unusual because Phil's blood is so thin already. This potentially could have broke off a piece and went to his lungs. They started him on Heparin injections for this. They can't do the studies you usually do to look for this because they can't take him down to radiology. They did a sonogram of his heart to look for major strain on it which the pulmonay embolus would do, and the sonogram looked good. So this is low on the list.

Volume Depletion: This could explain the low blood pressure and high heart rate but could not explain the poor oxygenation. They don't think he has too much fluid on his lungs anymore because his chest x-ray looks good, so they are going to give him a 500 mL fluid bolus.

Acid Build Up: His kidneys aren't working well and aren't able to get rid of the acid in his body. His potassium was also elevated which indicated this so they decided to restart him on dialysis. They are putting the new catheter in his neck to do dialysis through. They are putting that in now so they can start dialysis.

Beth just spoke with Dr. Ruiz and he said that they really don't think this in caused by infection or a blood clot but his underlyding lung shunting problems from the liver disease. Dr. Ruiz said they really want to give him a new liver that works well to help reverse this problem, but they need a window where he is stable in order to take him to the operating room. His liver continues to be stable today, no better, no worse. His INR was 1.5 and his bilirubin was 4.4.

In the midst of all of this, Beth felt the Lord telling her to go and talk with this lady, Mary, who was crying in the ICU waiting room. Her son, Brian, who is 30 had a kidney transplant 2 days ago and it is not working and they are starting him back on dialysis. Beth was able to pray with her. Pray for them during this time.

Last night when Beth and I were sitting in the waiting room, we met Cindy, whose husband got a liver transplant last night. They are from Austin and have been in the hospital 9 times in the past 4 months. He has been in the ICU at Baylor Dallas for 3 weeks and they have been living at the twiced bless house in dallas. They got a call for a liver in Ft. Worth and came over here. She is still staying in Dallas. Pray for continued opportunities to share with her.