Chad & I slept pretty well last night, despite the nurses and doctors poking and prodding him into the wee hours of the morning. I had some help from the mighty Excedrin PM – Chad had a monster dose of Benadryl. And no, I didn’t smuggle it into the hospital. He says the Benadryl didn’t help much and he slept pretty poorly.
While Chad was receiving his second bag of FFP (fresh frozen plasma)*, I noticed he was breaking out into hives on his face. I told the nurse when she came back, and that just started a flurry of activity. Luckily, we caught it very early and were able to fend off any full-blown allergic reaction.
But what was he reacting to?
We have NO idea.
He had all of his regular medications. He ate food from the hospital. He had IV fluids and plasma.
I’ve been assured it couldn’t have been the plasma since plasma is a cell-less product. There’s nothing in it that could have allowed an allergen to attach itself. It could have been something he ate. It could have been something he came into contact with yesterday before he was admitted. Who knows.
It looked like a mosquito had attacked his face. Seriously.
But all is well this morning.
This morning, after my routine questions: How did you sleep? Do you need anything? How do you feel?, I got a surprising (and fantastic) response.
“This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.”
WOW.
We’re not sure if it’s the shunt reset value. Or the small dose of steroids. Or a combination of the two.
But his headache was not noticeable this morning when he woke up.
It’s starting to creep back now and he feels it a little more, but I’m confident we are on the right track with the shunt reset. We can go down one more setting if we need to – and that’s reassuring. He started out at a setting of 1.5, then we dropped him to 1.0 yesterday afternoon. Previously, his setting was just off — reading a wacky 0.5 to 2.5 depending on the angle of the measurement tool. Weird. I know this means nothing to a lot of you, and I’m mainly including this information for myself — I can’t remember everything.
Chad had an ultrasound of his legs this morning, just to have a baseline of blood flow. If you remember, he has an issue with DVT and PE (deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary emboli). He seems to have issues with blood clots after each surgery, so the medical team is being extra careful.
Everything is going well this morning. We’re just hanging out and waiting for the surgical team to give us a time. We’re told it could be any time between 10am and noon. They are working us into the schedule, so we just have to be patient.
Chad is eagerly checking his email, as you can see. So click here to send him an email – it will give him something to do!
I will update via Twitter, Facebook and/or the blog when details become available.
Thanks for the well wishes, as always!
*Chad had FFP (plasma transfusion) to reverse the effects of his blood thinning medications. Since this surgery was unscheduled, his blood is way too thin for surgery. They will bulk up his blood to a decent level so that bleeding during surgery is not as risky.