The bed Kendall has had up in the ICU really wasn’t long enough for him. His feet were smashed to the side and against the bottom, and nephrology felt that it was contributing to how swollen his feet and ankles were. They tried taking off the foot board, but with the head of the bed elevated Kendall kept sliding down and hanging off the end of the bed. That couldn’t be very comfortable! I brought it up during rounds, and today they were able to get a new, much longer bed sent over from another hospital. Moving Kendall from one bed to the other wasn’t a simple ordeal, however.
With all of the different equipment that Kendall is connected to, there wasn’t space in his hospital room for two beds at the same time. So they (very carefully, with all the many wires) helped get Kendall into a hammock-type contraption, lifted him up with a big pulley (seen in the picture), moved the bed out from under him and pushed it into the hall, brought in the new bed, and carefully set him back down. It was almost comical in there for a while, seeing how many people it took to pull it off, and how long it took to untangle wires and make sure everything was connected back up properly at the end. Not to mention how many people it took to figure out how to get the new bed to turn on! Kendall was pretty tired out afterward, but he handled the whole thing like a champ. And he looked so much more comfortable in that new bed!
Yesterday was an especially hard day for Kendall. I was pretty shocked to see the condition he was in when I first walked in that morning. His heart was really struggling, and the doctor pulled me aside and said I should realize that Kendall was in danger of going into cardiac arrest. Having to discuss exactly what measures they should take to resuscitate him, and what level of brain damage that might lead to, was definitely not high on my list of things I ever wanted to do. Kendall’s blood pressure was dangerously low, he was septic, his platelet levels had dropped incredibly low again, and he was unconscious nearly the whole day. Attending rounds that morning was a pretty somber experience.
I got a call last night/early this morning (which about made my heart stop when I woke up to it) telling me that Kendall had had a very difficult night and they were going to start some different measures to help his heart. After that I was quite apprehensive about what I would be walking into this morning. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find Kendall very alert and his blood pressure and heart rate both looking great (even though they hadn’t ended up giving him the new medicine). Kendall’s liver numbers had taken a turn for the better, and his platelet levels were also up. He was also able to breathe for a bit using his own muscles instead of the ventilator doing all the work for him, and without his oxygen levels dropping too low. The encephalopathy is still a big concern, and being more alert meant he was more agitated (and more aware of his pain), but it was still a definite improvement from yesterday.
