September 22, 2009

This morning Emily went early to Kindred in order to meet Dr. Brice who is Gene's wound care physician.  He took care of the wound and told Emily that he's very pleased with the progress and thought that it is on it's way to healing.  The tissue is all now the pink healthy granulation tissue that one sees in a healing wound. It will take months to completely heal, but for now the expectation is that he is on the road to recovery from the wound.

The news about the ventilator is not so positive.  It seems that they are finding it very difficult to lower his pressure very much without him quickly desaturating.  He also desaturates when he has very much physical exertion - especially when he is turned on his left side.  And of course turning is so critical to making sure that he doesn't spend too much time in one spot for the purposes of pressure wounds. Tonight his pressure was set at 20 and his supplemental oxygen is at 35%. He seemed comfortable at these levels.

Gene also has another infection in his PIC line as well as a urinary tract infection. He has seemed to have a good day in spite of these infections although he seems very tired and is mostly resting.

This afternoon Kindred had what they called a family meeting.  This is an opportunity for the family and it's advocates to meet with the care givers and hear what they have to say about the patient's progress and to ask questions.  Emily, Lynn, Alan, Steve, Joyce, and Dr. Carver, Emily and Gene's minister, were at the meeting.   Unfortunately none of the physicians were in attendance.  Dr. DeVersa gets a pass on that because it was his day off and he has attended these meetings before, (and because the meeting was scheduled for Lynn's benefit because of treatment schedules)  but all in all the family was disappointed that the other physicians were not in attendance.   The bottom line for the meeting was to let the family know that Gene is no longer considered to be in need for acute care, which is the level of care offered by Kindred and to ask that we begin to consider what care plan we would like to implement in the fairly near future.  There was no strict timeline at this point.  There is much to consider.


Prayer Requests
Please pray that Gene and his family have the  strength and courage for the next steps and peace about the decisions.