Friday, June 26th

Mom talked to Dr. Klesney-Tait today (Dad's head doctor). She said that they're going to try to put a scope in to see where the blood clots are all at. Dad's blood pressure was doing good earlier today, but has since lowered some. Dr. Tait said that if Dad's heart were to go out on him, she didn't recommend resuscitation because the chest compressions would be too hard on his bones. At this time though, his heart looks okay, but you never know. He's currently at 100% ventilator support and his O2 saturations are in the low 90's. As Mom described to me, "He's the sickest I think he's ever been." Dr. Tait said she's still holding hope for him and that she's seen patients come out of this, but he is extremely sick right now. They haven't found any infection and he only had a little bit of a temperature today. Again, they're going to try to lay him on his stomach in order to clear up some of the "junk" in his lungs. As much as I hate to use the word "grim" I think it's appropriate for his condition right now. Please, we can use all of your prayers at this time...that's all we can do is hope and pray.

Tuesday, June 23rd - Thursday, June 26th

It's really late, and I work in the morning, but I feel like I need to update you all because I don't want to give false hope with the last post...as bad as that sounds. Just two days removed from the whole 65% ventilator dependency, Dad was back on 95% today (Thursday). His kidneys seem to be pretty much tanking (creatnine levels in the 3's) again. This was really tough on all of us today...Mom left work and headed back to Iowa City this afternoon. There's also blood in his urine, which might be caused by a blood clot in his bladder. That might be part of the reason for his rise in ventilator support as well...still no fever's as far as I know. Dad's head doctor still isn't giving up hope on him, but she's starting to get worried about the lungs and whether they've been permenantly damaged. For the first time since they said he wasn't going to make it, I can honestly say I'm scared. Not worried. Scared. I'm really starting to wonder if he's going to make it out of this. We need some progress. Soon. I'll probably be joining Mom in Iowa City soon if things stay the way they are. I'll keep you posted.

A Letter of Thanks

Our family would like to express our deep and sincere appreciation for all of the support, prayers, love, and gifts that all of you have given us. We are so touched by everyone's care and thoughtfulness. Please continue to keep Mike in your thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely,
Karen Miller

Wednesday-Monday, June 17th-22nd

Dad got moved back down to the ICU on Friday because they wanted to start him on a new pain/sedative called Propofol. Giving him this drug increases his risk of low blood pressure and the ICU is constantly monitoring that, unlike the 7th floor. When I left Iowa City on Thursday, Dad's oxygen requirements were at 90%. When Mom called in last night he was down to 65%. It's crazy to think that he's only breathing 35% on his own, yet that seems like such a huge leap at this point and time. As far as his kidneys are concerned, the creatinine levels got as low as 1.3, which is nearly back to normal. Yesterday they were at 1.5...so up a little, but that can be due to the newly administered Propofol. Dad no longer gets agitated when he opens his eyes, and hasn't broken a fever in the past 2 days, so those are more steps in the right direction. In speaking with his floor doctor on the 7th floor on Thursday, I asked him what order we should be seeing things getting better, to which he replied, "I don't mean to sound dramatic, but our first step is to keep him alive." That was tough to stomach, but over the past few days he does seem to be improving more drastically then I've seen in the past month. With Father's Day being yesterday, it really made me sit back and fixate on this point...how many people...right now, are taking advantage of the fact that they have a healthy father to spend the day with? If Dad pulls through, I know I'll take full advantage of every minute I spend with him.

Sunday, June 14th - Tuesday, June 16th

Over these few days, things have pretty much stayed steady. Dad's still under heavy sedation, is between 70 and 100% dependent on the ventilator, and still has a fever off and on. The only significant change has been his Creatinine level has gone from 3.3 to 1.9. Once again, normal levels are around 1.0 but this is the lowest those have been in recent memory. Creatinine is directly related to kidney function. It's kind of hard for me to explain exactly, but here's a link if you'd like to know more...http://www.medicinenet.com/creatinine_blood_test/article.htm
I'll keep you updated if anything new happens.

Tuesday, June 9th - Saturday, June 13th

I haven't been posting on here much recently because, honestly, not much has gone on. Dad is still occasionally running a fever that hovers around the 100* mark, but a dose of Tylenol seems to clear that up. Dad was on 5 mg of Ativan today, which is a rather large dosage (in fact, it's the most they are allowed to give him.) This is to pretty much sedate him, although it's not quite doing the job. This is probably due to his body building a tolerance to the drug. Because of this, the medical staff is thinking about switching him off the Ativan and Fentanyl (pain medication) and putting him on another drug that would work both as a sedative and a pain reliever. Again, today Dad was at 100% dependent on the ventilator, but his O2 stats were good at that. His white count was down around the 16,000 mark...I believe 10,000 is deemed normal...but he's been as high as 26,000 so that's a positive sign. One more key thing that the nurse said today was that when she last saw him this past week, they were able to see the hardware in Dad's back through the incision. Now today when neurosurgery came in, they were unable to see the hardware because some tissue had grown over it. This goes to prove that his back is making an attempt to heal now with the aid of the "WoundVac." Once they feel it's ready, they will sew his incision shut and allow the wound to finally close shut and heal completely. The talks about having to remove the hardware were in the past and no longer seem to be a plausible option.

Friday-Monday, June 5th-8th

So I haven't been back in Iowa City since Thursday so I'm a little rusty on the update this time. So far, to me, everything's staying about the same. Again, Dad still does not have a temperature which is definitely a positive sign. Mom said that today he was "snowed in" or pretty heavily sedated. There was some blood in Dad's urine today so they are wondering if he might have a urinary tract infection, or if that was due to a new catheter insertion. Regardless, he is still hovering around on his ventilator pressure support...somewhere between 55 and 80 percent dependency. Other than that, I don't think there is much more to update you on...things are kind of at a stand-still at this point. It seems to me like this is a down time to let his back heal up a bit before they start doing much of anything else.