Day 13

Tuesday 9/25

I arrived at the hospital by 6:45 am because they were hoping to remove him from the ventilator. I wanted to be with him during part of this process but they would not let me in to see him until after they had completely removed him from the vent. It was 10:30 by this time. They told me the doctor wanted to limit his visitors for the day. I was allowed to go back for about 10 minutes. I felt really bad for his mom, bother and grandmother. They had driven all day yesterday and wanted to see him so badly. They really did not want him to have many visitors so I told them that only his mom could go back until the nurses told his different. It was very hard on her to see him so sick. The rest of the morning and early afternoon they did not allow us to be in the room with him. He was getting very agitated whenever anyone was in with him.

His heart rate became erratic and they called a cardiologist in for a consult and he told me that my dh now had an atrial fibrillation. The course of action for this would be medication to help the "electrical" part of his heart. Because his hemoglobin was low they could not give him a blood thinner and there was a risk of blood clots which could lead to a stroke. I did my best to not break down in front of his mother because I did not want her to become more upset.

After the 3-4:30 shift change we were allowed back in to see Jeff again.
When they let us go into and see him at 4:30 Jeff finally recognized us. He was still confused and disoriented and would not talk. They let all of us in at one time (me, Jeff's mom, grandmother, brother and my mama) for a few minutes. The rest of the evening they only let two of us at a time visit with him. He does not remember anything that has happened over the past 12 days and does not believe that he is as sick as he is. He did begin talking some before I had to leave to come home. Jeff did not want to be alone so his brother stayed with him for the night. He is still very confused and the doctors say that because his kidney's are not working like they should that it will take longer for him to come out of the "fog" he is in. Due to his kidneys not functioning like they should we are still looking at 6 to 8 weeks of dialysis.

The Atrial Fibrillation corrected itself but they are still giving him medication as a preventive measure. In the morning they are doing a procedure to check for damage to his heart and look for blood clots.