Sunday Dec 26, Hospital Day 9 continued

ok it's Bena again with a oh-so-boring medical update.   

First - while I was hoping this would not happen, we need to deal with a hematoma (bleeding) around the kidney that occurred as a consequence of the renal biopsy that was necessary to establish Tai's diagnosis.  Tai needed to be moved to a more monitored (telemetry) floor (6 West bed 30) and must remain on strict bed rest to avoid a lot of movement.  He was transfused 2 more units of blood so if you were thinking of donating blood for him - it's not too late!  We are hoping that his blood loss will stabilize.  If it doesn't, options might include a small procedure to block the bleeding areas (embolization with interventional radiology).

Kidneys took a little step backwards with a creatinine of 6.8 but this is not surprising and regardless, he continues to receive dialysis.

Heart improving - not normal yet, and they are adjusting his heart meds to manage the blood pressure and optimize the strength of the heart.  (ejection fraction 40-45%)

Pneumonia slowly improving.  One of the 4 antibiotics will end tomorrow, and the game plan is to end each of the other 3 antibiotics after completing 7-10 days (depending on each drug).  The chest x-ray still looks pretty serious, but clinically he is improving.  And as a side note, the radiology findings typically lag behind the clinical improvement anyway.

ok, that's all i've got for now,
i'll update again after tomorrow's urology evaluation,
bena