Going Home Soon!

Hi Friends,

It is amazing how much better Greg is doing in just 2 weeks.  I feel a little shocked by his turn-around and how much better he feels.  This situation has truly become a best-case scenario when compared to all of the really scary possibilities we were facing.

At this point, Greg has lost nearly 30lbs of fluid which the doctors believe just slowly accumulated over time.  As you can imagine, he feel so much better physically (even though he is still a little weak from being so sick and spending so much time in bed at the hospital)! 

They've determined that Greg has chronic diastolic heart failure.  His heart muscle doesn't relax as much as it should, which means that it can't properly pump blood through it, making Greg suscepitble to having extra fluid in his body (which then causes heart failure and in Greg's case, kidney failure).  Over the past few days, the doctors have been trying to figure out the right balance between heart function, kidney function, diuretics vs. extra water in his body, and how he feels.  Its not possible for all of these things to be 100% and they are prepared to let the kidneys not function as well (due to the effects of the diuretics he needs) in order to allow his heart to get rid of the fluid it needs to to pump properly.  Obviously, this is all in laymans terms and I barely understand it!  But I do understand that there are a bunch of factors that they are trying to balance to give Greg the best quality of life and heart/kidney function that he can have.

Hopefully, he will be having a right heart catherization tomorrow morning which will tell the doctors how much extra fluid he still has in his body and how it is effecting his heart.  Once we have that information, they can decide what doses of different medications he needs and if he's ready to go home or not.  This will also help them (and us) monitor his health in the future so that we don't get in another situation where he is suddenly in heart and kidney failure and we didn't see it coming.    

We are REALLY hoping that we can go home tomorrow!  But more than that, we just want to make sure that Greg is healthy enough and they have everything figured out (especially since we live 4 hours away from the hospital and can't just pop-in to recallibrate things!).  At the same time, I feel a little nervous about going home and monitoring things on our own, so please pray for us as we learn to watch Greg more carefully for signs that the heart failure is worsening.

Thank you for all of your support, encouragement and prayers!  We are so thankful to be sharing good news - your prayers for Greg have been answered!

Love,

Elise