Procedure and update

Marty is having an angiography right now-they will give him dye and feed a little camera up into the femoral artery and outward to check for blood leaking. His hemoglobin will not go above 5.5 and that is even after they give him blood. He's bleeding somewhere and they need to find out where that is. They called at 7:15 and said they were starting then-it's now 10:00 and I haven't heard back. I know it can take quite a bit of time, so I'm trying not to get nervous. I won't sleep until I hear that he is OK.

They brought in the x-ray machine today (I'm wondering why they didn't before) to re-check his breaks and see if there was one they missed or if the bones had shifted. They were as they had been, so they are checking to see if the bleeding is in the pelvis.

The problem with this is that his kidneys are already not doing well--his creatinine is at 3 and that's bad. The dye is not kind to kidneys and they are afraid this will ruin them. The alternative is to let him bleed or do a CAT scan, which would show where the bleed is, but then they would have to fix it in another way and this way they can check and fix all at the same time.

He is still in a medically induced coma, suffering ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) and will be that way until the bleeding stops.

The emergency the other night was a result of a blood thinner he was given--shortly after they gave it to him his blood pressure dropped, his O2 plummeted, and his heart began racing "dangerously so". The Dr thought they may lose him at that point, but obviously they pulled him out of that.

SO ... pray right NOW if you can, that he will pull through this angiography and they can find the source of the bleeding and FIX IT. I have great hope that once they find it he will begin to get better.

Tomorrow I am staying home to get some things done. I hate taking a day off, but I have so much to do that I can't see any other way.

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UPDATE! They found, and embolized, a bleed in his pelvis--hopefully he will start healing now! They will call and let me know what his hemoglobin is as soon as they get labs back.