Transfusion redux

Kevin again.

Mike did not go home today. He got two transfusions instead, one set of platelets to help with clotting and another unit of whole blood. If you can give blood, please do so - you'll be helping someone who really needs it. The problem currently is that he's still bleeding in his kidneys from the surgeries, and the doctors want to see that stop before they remove the "perc neph" - the percutaneous nephrostomy from the second surgery.

He needs to have 24 hours of mostly clear (or at least mostly blood-free) fluids in the perc neph before they remove it. Which means he's at least a day away from going home, or was as of earlier tonight.

In happier news, we've been dialing back his oxygen, trying to get him down to below 3 liters/minute so he could switch to the portable concentrator. That seems to be going well. We've also asked the nursing staff to get him tested for switching to pulse delivery of oxygen, which would be better in a couple of ways: first, because the portable concentrator can deliver pulses at higher volume than it can a steady flow, and second, because he wouldn't have the steady flow of air drying out his nasal passages.

I have the feeling I wrote that before. Oh well, it's important enough it's worth saying twice if I did.

- Kevin