Greg Covid - Day 14 I kind of "talked" to Greg last night!

 I spoke with Greg's nurse, Julie, last night.  I really like her!  She's very sweet and easy to talk to.  Greg is doing OK, but they had to turn on norepinephrine for his blood pressure, because it was getting quite low.  They turned on around 5:30.  She said they can run a very low dose through a regular IV, but if you start running it higher, there is risk of damaging the vessel.  Doctors talked it over and decided to put a central line in again at around 7 p.m.  They will assess and make sure that he doesn’t need the norepinephrine any more before removing it.  Otherwise, no significant change today.  He vent is on PRVC mode, which allows for different settings, as opposed to spontaneous mode.  He was having a little more difficulty breathing, so they decided to keep him on this mode and increased sedation a little to help him relax more.  Right now his rate on the vent is 18 and his respiratory rate is 24-25, so he still breathing over the vent, but not in the 40’s. 

His temperature is still fluctuating, so he is still on Tylenol.  Currently at 102.4.  "We have seen a trend with covid patienst having very fluctuating temps.  It varies greatly."  They also turned the temperature down in his room to help keep him cool .  

Otherwise, things are all right.  It would be better if he didn’t need the blood pressure meds due to low blood pressure.   It’s still going to be a long process and he's going to have some ups and downs.  This is something that we see and sometimes the down will take several days of being down before he starts back up again.  It can really vary a lot.  Every patient is different. 

When I started talking to Julie about how hard it is to not be able to see him, or hold his hand, or even talk to him, she suggested that she could call me from Greg's room and prop the phone next to his ear so I could talk to him.  So, ten minutes later, she called me back and I spent 15 minutes talking to Greg, telling him how much I love him and how much we all need him to fight and get better, because we need him home, his kids need him home, the dogs (Mater especially) need him home.  I told him that there were hundreds and hundreds of people praying for him and that Jesus was sitting right there with him and breathing his life-giving breath into his lungs.  I don't know if he could hear me or not, but I'm praying he did.  As expected, I was a blubbering fool for most of the conversation. 

I spoke to Nurse Martin before church today and Greg was pretty much the same.  The vent is at 55%, which is not too bad.  He didn't really have much more to say.  

Today's picture is from when we hiked through the Dells of the Eau Claire a few years back, well probably about ten years back.