New Developments

First of all I must apologize. Jon had become quite obstinate about sharing information with me. He didn't want the nurses telling me of any infections he had, trips to the E.R., what time he came in at night, what comments he made to the nurses, etc. Sometime in November I discovered he had a bedsore but he could never quite remember its size. When he joined us for Thanksgiving he had a wound vac. It apparently did its job nicely because around Christmas they removed it. He went to Fort Wayne to discuss the possibility of having a skin flap procedure where they cover it with some fatty tissue and then pull flesh around it to cover it. However, today he reported that he had another one developing on the other side of his rear and now is being turned almost every hour at night.

Greg came home one day in December and said that Jon was driving down the hallway and suddenly stopped and just stared for a little bit. He snapped out of it and said he had just fallen asleep. There have been several more occasions like this and one more serious that had him sent to the hospital for tests which included an MRI. Today, his nurse called to tell me that he had had yet another incident. He was unresponsive, eyes closed and his skin was pale and ashen. She couldn't rouse him until she rubbed his chest but then he fell back to being unresponsive again. Again, she massaged his chest and he came around and talked a little with her. She told him she wanted to check his blood pressure and he seemed to have lost his orientation and wasn't sure of the way to his room. His blood pressure was 82/62. I went over to the hospital and he said they had already done a ekg and it seemed ok. They ended up taking two different blood draws and two urine samples. His urinary tract infection seems to have cleared up as that sample was ok. The blood samples showed a potassium deficiency with a reading of .9 (lowest normal is 3.5 ) After 3 long hours everything else seemed ok. They gave him a "potassium cocktail" - my terminology, not theirs - which contained 5 dissolved capsules of potassium! and he was free to go.

Upon returning home I checked low potassium and one of the symptoms is fainting. When Greg told me of the first occasions my first thought was petite mal seizures, especially since Greg said his eyes were open. Perhaps they were minor fainting spells but maybe those were unrelated to today's issue.

To bring you up to date on other activities we hosted the Slawson Thanksgiving dinner at my church which made it much easier for us since there were 26 in attendance. Christmas we had at our house. We had 13 people for dinner which made for a full house-especially with Jon's oversized chair. A good time was had on both occasions. We celebrated Joe's 27th birthday in November at the house and Greg's at Brookview. Joe is currently awaiting the arrival of little Liam, who can come any time now.