Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Update on Steve

Well, went and saw Steve at the hospital after Mr. Fantastic got home from work. Got some mixed news. The good news is they were able to remove the chest tube this afternoon.

The bad news is, he had some kind of reaction to something last night that cuased his heart rate to get extremely high - over 200 - and his white blood cell count is elevated. He is still up and about and spending as much time out of bed as possible and the pain isn't too bad.

The heart rate has settled down now, but he's also started having the same crazy skin reaction that he had shortly after the brain surgery last summer. Last time the doctors thought it was an allergy to Dilantin (an anti-seizure med), but because he didn't have any of that this time, now they think it's a reaction to one of the antibiotics he was on. Hopefully the skin thing won't last as long as it did last time since he was only on the antibiotics for one day this time. Because of the new problems that have cropped up, he most likely won't be going home tomorrow but they didn't give us an ETA on when they thought he might get sprung.

None of the doctors seem all that concerned about the skin thing, and he's even got the same attending (Dr. Sutarik) this time as he had last time. So she's seen how awful this got before and she's just not that concerned. Steve and I don't know what to think about that. On the one hand, well, okay, if the doctors aren't worried, then maybe neither should we be. But on the other hand, it was so terrible last time, you know, I had to take him to the ER and they had to treat him like a burn victim and...and these people may be doctors but they don't know everything.

So, I'm torn. I mean, I guess there's nothing I can actually do, short of fretting about it, which doesn't do anybody any good, so I might as well not do that. Guess we just need to be vigilant and hope for the best. If you have any spare good karma, feel free to send it Steve's way.