deja vu

The term deja vu is French and means, literally, 'already seen.'"

Well, I'm sure some of you have already heard that I have a Paw Paw in the hospital again. He's been in cardiac ICU since Wednesday night, but he's being moved to the cardiac stepdown unit today. His first stay in CVICU was in January 2007, when he ended up having an aortic valve replacement. Hopefully this hospital stay will be shorter than that 18-day one!

My grandmother called us on Wednesday night to ask if I could come listen to Paw Paw with my stethoscope because he was having chest pains and shortness of breath. Let me tell y'all something. If you ever tell a nurse--any nurse--that you're having chest pains and shortness of breath, she will tell you to go the ER (especially if you had heart surgery a year ago!). Needless to say, I said no way and sent them to the ER. Grandmother finally convinced Paw Paw to go (though he said he was going just to shut her up, haha).

Note: skip this paragraph if you don't care about the medical stuff. Because of the way his heart was behaving in the ER (high heart rate, elevated cardiac enzymes in his bloodwork), he was sent to ICU. Since then, they've done lots of tests and we've heard lots of different possibilities as to what could be going on. Among those are some kind of infection in or around the heart that could have caused heart damage (causing his cardiac enzymes to go up), pneumonia (his white count has also been up, indicating infection), pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs), and pleural effusion (fluid in the membranes that surround the lung). I tend to lean most toward a pleural effusion, which can be caused by congestive heart failure or pneumonia, both of which he probably has. He's also had an irregular heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation), but that stabilized yesterday. They've got him on a heart medication, an antibiotic, and a blood thinner to treat all this.

If you saw him, you wouldn't even know he was sick. He certainly doesn't look sick enough to be in ICU (and he's not, which is why they're moving him today!). He's not having chest pain or shortness of breath anymore. His lab work is looking a little better each day. He looks great and is acting normal - just talking our ears off because he's so bored! In ICU, he can only have visitors at certain times, so I know he'll be glad to be in a room where people can come see him all day long. He's got a heart cath scheduled for Monday, so be praying for good results from that!

I haven't gotten a chance to update since all this started because I've been working 'til 7:15 each night and then trying to get to the last ICU visitation (he's not at my hospital) and then coming home and going to bed (and trying to squeeze dinner in somewhere in there). I'm off the next several days, though, so I'll try to update daily.