Still Doing Great!

Donna had a great day yesterday! She is in very high spirits, even talking about throwing a "shin dig!" Don't ya just love it?

The docs yesterday talked of trying to move her central catheter out of the thigh/groin area to an upper extremity. Let's pray this happens today because if it does then Donna can start getting out of bed. Up to this point she has been total bed rest (yuk!). She is anxious to get up and start working with physical therapy to rebuild her strength.

Medically she is as stable as can be expected, probably even more so. Her labs continue to show improvement in everything that gets monitored, with the exception of the kidneys. They are holding where they've been for days, but we are thankful that they are not worsening. The doctors assure us that while her kidneys are in what is considered stage 5 kidney failure they are not worsening and no further damage is being done at this point, so they are wanting to wait just a little longer to see if they kick start themselves. If they don't then they might (with an emphasis on "might") consider trying a few dialysis treatments to see if that will jump start the kidneys. This in no way is to be interpreted to mean that Donna needs dialysis long term. We have no way of knowing any of that right now.

These blog posts are going to start slowing down. Now that Donna's condition has improved vastly we, the family, have readjusted our caregiver schedule. The plan at this time is to have only one of us at a time in North Carolina staying with Donna so that we can spread out the schedule between the daughters, the sisters, and her Mom. It's wonderful that Donna is doing so well that only one person needs to be with her, but that is going to slow down the updates since phone calls will be secondary to caring for Donna. We just don't want this to be interpreted as a cause for alarm.