Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Craig Battling Strongly Future Brighter

Craig's brother Jason sent this report on Thursday, april 9, 2009 (Ed. note).

Hi,

Craig went into the OR this morning at 11am (they had a few cancellation so they were able to schedule him in there this morning). Within an hour they had the temporary tracheotomy in place, and everything went fine. He is resting well, and everything else (blood pressure, heart rate) are stable. They cut back on some of his blood pressure meds (phenylephrine) so that is looking good. As long as his blood work continues to look good, they will continue with 2 chemo treatments next week.

The plan is now to continue to monitor everything, and ween him off the sedation and gradually ween him off the ventalator too. They will monitor this daily, and it sounds like they can tweak this once they see how he is reacting to it. Gradually they can ween him off the sedation and ventalator and get him to a point where he is breathing on his own. It also sounds like he may have the trach in when he leaves the ICU as well (for a short period of time anyway, then he can get that taken out).

They did drain 1 L from his belly today, and they continue to give him the albumen protein too. It had been 2 days since they drained any fluid. His belly is still swollen, but they don't want to be draining too much. At this point now, we're wondering if the chemo or the other medication will start taking affect and eventually help with the absorption of the nourishmnet so the fluid doesn't come back. I would think that'll be a longer process over the weeks/months ahead.

Jason

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