Well, here is the update. Yesterday, Mom called me in the morning to say dad was running a fever again...it wasn't terrible, but it was there. She called the home care nurse who came over and by the time she got there, it was down. So was his blood pressure though, around 100/60. His heart rate was normal, so she planned on coming back to see him in a few hours. She called a few hours later, but dad was sleeping, so she said she'd call back (in retrospect, she probably should have come then). So a couple hours later, dad was up, and so was his fever. He was also dizzy. Mom called me to say she was taking him to the ER. I rushed over to their place just in case she needed help getting him to the car, but she had already left.
I met them at the ER, and the triage nurse actually recognized a sick patient. His heart rate was way up, his BP way down, and she got him into an observation room right away. My only complaint is they could have worked a little faster to get an iv into him, it took almost 45 minutes before a nurse came to make a couple of attempts, and then it was shift change so it took a while later to get one.
Once the IV went in, they started monitoring him, so I'm not sure when his BP started to creep up. When he was finally hooked up, fluids flowing and after having some gravol, his BP was now 145/70, and his HR started increasing more. He was freezing cold and really aggressively shivering. The doc came in and said his white blood cells were twice as high as any time in the past, so we were dealing with an infection.
Anyway, we were sitting there waiting and suddenly dad started complaining of left sided chest pain. He had also been complaining of pain in his ankle for a little while. I ran for a nurse, and they acted immediately but also kicked us out. I mentioned the leg pain as well because the first thing (besides heart attack) I thought of was a clot to his lungs.
So, about 1/2 hr later, the doctor came and talked to us, told us dad was very sick, they didn't know what was really going on except sepsis, possibility of a clot, etc. The urologist on call, and the internist on call were both coming to see him, and they were calling in an ultrasound tech to check out his abdomen and neobladder. He also brought up end of life wishes that my dad had discussed, because he was worried that he was that sick. That is what really freaked us out.
Long story short, he does have a urinary tract infection, his kidneys looked ok on the u/s, his bladder looked ok (intact), there was no free fluid in his abdomen, they are treating him for a clot just in case and he is having a CT scan today. They moved him up to the CCU, his bp, hr were both really high when we were able to see him again, and he is dealing with sepsis.
I just called, he has done ok for the night, his fever which had jumped up to 105.8 came back down to normal overnight, so hopefully that means they made a good antibiotic choice.
I'll be heading up to see him shortly. He gave us quite a scare, and he is still quite critical, but I am guessing since he is responding to the meds that he will hopefully be ok.
Mom of course was feeling terribly guilty about what she wrote yesterday morning and I told her it wasn't her fault and she shouldn't be guilty. Her feelings were real and valid and they did not cause this to happen!!
Anyway, thank you again for your support...we'll keep you updated. andrea
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