Just One More Day

Carlos has to spend just one more night in the ICU unless he decides to spew blood again. He's doing very well. There hasn't been any bleeding in at least 24 hours and his numbers all look great. He feels better, perky even.

The colonoscopy went well but they did find some things - some they expected and others not so much. He definitely has diverticulosis which is where the bleeding was coming from.  The artery they placed the coils in was amongst a group of diverticula.  That area was inflammed and edematous.  The GI doc also described the diverticula as very friable - meaning very prone to bleeding.  He touched a couple and they started to bleed.

The other area of concern involved the corner of the ascending and transverse colon.  I wish I could put pictures up for you but my tablet just won't cooperate.  There was an area that could be one of two possibilities and we won't know for sure until biopsy results come back.  In people with heart failure, sometimes various organs can be affected by decreased oxygen supplies and this is one of the area of the colon most likely to occur.  It's called ischemic colitis. Hopefully we will find out the definitive diagnosis later today. He said if this was the diagnosis, management would be conservative and with the LVAD in place, would likely improve over time. So more on that later when we know. He did recommend holding off on the restarting of anticoagulation for a couple days.

Other than wrapping up the GI issues, Carlos is doing great. He walked quite a distance this morning without pain, shortness of breath, or a lot of fatigue. They are letting him eat lunch today. Last night after he came back from his procedure, still high on good drugs, the first thing he told me was that he wanted one of everything on the menu. :-) They will restart him on a low dose of coumadin soon also.

Libby had a great birthday thanks to Beth and Ryanne, my mom and Jay, Kim, and Carver. I shared a video that Kim took on the Build-a-Bear expedition on Facebook. I will post some pictures there as well. I showed Carlos the video of her opening her presents. And we did video chat while we all sang to her and she blew out candles.