We took Mikie to see Dr. Young Wednesday.  He has this huge bruise on his arm close to where the blood clot was and we could not think of anything we did to cause it.  We also wanted him to see his central line in his groin and get some direction about getting it out.  Since Mikie is on blood thinners he didn’t think it should be taken out at home or even in his office, but that we should follow up with the surgeons that placed it.  Home health is coming Friday to draw blood again to check his PT/INR levels.  We want to get the line out as soon as possible as the longer it is in the greater the chance of infection, and we don’t need no mo’ infections!

Mikie’s belly was complaining a lot Thursday afternoon and keeping his heart rate up pretty high.  Nothing we did seemed to help and his pulse was easily in the 130’s.  I had to shut his pulsar watch off for a while.  We knew what needed to happen and only Mikie could make it so.  It finally did, and he feels much better now.  About the time he was maxing out one of our home health services brought a new heart monitor, one very much like what they have at the hospital. It is no more accurate, nor does it need to be, than the watch version we were using, but the alarm is much louder so we don’t have to stay in the room with him to know that his heart is racing.  He had a pretty fair night, I only got up maybe 4 times, but they were mostly all false alarms.  Once it went off because it said the battery was low, and I’m not sure why it did that because it is plugged in to the wall.  I played with it for a few minutes and got it working again.  It woke me once because his oxygen level dropped to 80 just for a minute.  His breathing was very shallow so I just gave him a little touch and he started breathing normally and it picked back up to its normal percentage of 95-99.  A couple of other times I woke up from habit just to check him.  Finally it got us up just before 6 because he took the probe off his finger.  When I got it back on his heart was hitting about 115 bpm so we gave him his morning meds and sat him up in his chair.  He’s pretty comfortable now, and we decided to stay up.

Mike is a little more alert the last few days and using his hands, or at least one of them, more than usual.  I don’t know why he suddenly developed these AD responses to anything uncomfortable to him, but we are learning how to manage it. Because he is gradually improving my hopes are up that he may eventually return to earlier levels of activity.  It’s going to be very difficult to leave him with a sitter unless that person is able react to his times of distress.  The things we have to do now to care for him take much more of our time, but we’re not complaining.  Mikie is still not a burden to us, but a blessing.  We’re just so happy to have him home.