We have a guardian angel and her name is nurse Agnes. Saturday night was a rough night. The worst one since my dad was admitted to the hospital Thursday. We knew there was a risk for aspiration pneumonia and he had begun to spike a fever and his labs came back positive for staph. Not only that but his vitals were starting to tank. He was on 65% oxygen (normal is 20%) and his ability to absorb oxygen (ABG) was 56% (should be 80-100%). My mom being an ICU nurse saw the writing on the wall and knew he was getting Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) which as a 25% fatality rate. His lungs had developed inflammation because he had aspirated stomach juice into his lungs when he first had his cardiac arrest.
That night we got down on our knees and prayed while nurse Agnes spent the night suctioning, medicating, running labs and adjusting the vent settings. A last ditch effort was made to increase the PEEP setting and decrease the vent to 60%. PEEP stands for Positive end-expiratory pressure and this increases the amount of oxygen that remains in the lungs which hopefully would improve the exchange of oxygen in his lungs. Around noon Sunday my brother and I prayed over my dad again that God would work another miracle in healing his lungs and that the next set of labs would show improvement. Less than one hour later when I took my grandparents (Dad's parents) back to see him I noticed a significant improvement in his pulse and blood pressure. Around 4pm we saw that his oxygen saturation levels on the monitor were at 100% and our nurse, Rachael, came in with a smile on her face. She pulled up the latest lab results and waited for our reaction. They.Were.All.Perfect. Less that eight hours ago he was headed down a dark road and now he was perfect. It was another miracle.
As the evening wore on he became more alert and moving around every time someone came in the room. It was such a stark contrast to the day before when he was barely moving. He was certainly feeling much better. Sunday night we had our angel nurse Agnes again and we knew he was in good hands.
Infertility Update: Hammer and I made the decision to hold off this cycle with everything that is going on with my dad. I just don't think it would be a good decision to start a stressful process while going through another stressful process and I know all I will be worried about for a while will be my dad. I feel good about this decision. And right now the only place I want to be is at my dad's beside.
2 comments:
I am so overjoyed to see that things are getting better with your dad, Praise God! You guys are in my continued thoughts and prayers
Thank goodness that your dad is doing so much better. My prayers are still with you and your family.
I agree with you on waiting for the ivf. I would do the same.
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