Mom had a surgery on Tuesday to clean out an open
wound on her right foot that resulted from falling and bruising her feet a couple weeks ago - ah, the joys of being
diabetic and injuring your feet. It seems that her heart rate shot up really high during surgery, and they ended up
knocking her out completely at that point. When I went in to see her that evening, the
cardiologist told me that she was in
atrial fibrillation - and so her heart rate has been around 150 - 160 bpm. She was started on a
Cardizem drip to help slow her heart down some.
This morning (Wednesday) her blood pressure bottomed out, and her blood sugar went really low - 24, when the normal is 70 - 120. Her heart rate was still up, and her body temperature was around 92 - 93 F. They apparently had orders to transfer her to ICU, but then she stabilized some, and they kept her on the Advanced Care Unit, instead.
I watched the nurse do the dressing change on Mom's right foot, and you can now see the bone in her foot under the wound. It is, however, bleeding well at this point, as evidenced by the pool of blood that collected on the floor after she sat with her foot dangling off the bed for a few minutes.
Mom's got a freakin' Christmas tree on two IV poles: NaCl 0.09%, Dopamine, Heparin, Cardizem, and occasionally a hyperalimentation solution or cefazolin.
Mom's creatinine - one of the lab tests for kidney function - is at 6.0. (It is supposed to be around 1.3 or so. and 4.0 is considered "critical.") The nephrologist at Camden-Clark wants to start Mom on dialysis, but Dr. Rudolph (the one primarily caring for her in the hospital now) wants to wait a bit. Thing is, if her body doesn't get rid of the toxins through urinating, they just build up and cause more problems. She's already somewhat confused - not quite sure of the day/time, etc. When it was too warm in her room today, she suggested that I open the blinds a bit, as a way to cool off the room, to give an example of her confusion. That is probably caused by her lack of kidney function.
So, that's the basic on what's going on. I think I should try to sleep, though I'm not sure I'll have much success.