A Higher Level of Service

The staff at UWMC finally made the decision to move Tyler into the ICU unit. While he is fairly stable right now, his blood pressure is very low and he is running a fever. In order to provide more observation and a higher level of care, they have moved us into an ICU room.

They also want to run the dialysis process for him at least once tomorrow to help his body clear out the excess phosphorus that has built up from the cells dying off. His kidneys have not failed, but they are certainly impaired right now. We are hopeful that his numbers will have improved in tomorrow morning's labs and we can prove to them that his body can do the cleaning on its own. They assured us that this isn't a permanent diagnosis at this point, just a way to help his kidneys through a rough patch. I guess it is a bit like hiring a temp kidney to take on the extra workload.

His latest white blood cell count was 4, so he's definitely dropped way down in that area. We expect to see further drops with the next couple of lab tests. So far no sign of nausea from the chemo, but it is only a matter of time. Last time if was a salad that did him in and he couldn't eat it for months. I think I'll steer him away from salads for now....