Irv Update - January 2011 #8

Dear F&F;

My internet has been up and down for a couple of days, mostly down. Repair people coming this morning.

Anyway, at 10:17 pm on Monday night Irv produced a fart! Hoorrayyy!

Yesterday they plugged his NG tube and even put some 50 cc's of fluid thru it into his stomach in the afternoon and he was fine. If the same continued during the night they will pull that damn NG today.

Plus, they stopped the Cardizem, too. As long as Irv doesn't have any a-fib events by this morning he can go off the full-time heart monitoring and they will move him to the regular surgical floor.

LOTS of progress!

I await the Internet repair people and then will go to Bend to see Irv and find out the latest news.

Yesterday, Dr. Koteen, the gastroenterologist taking care of Irv the last several months, came to see him. Dr. Koteen has already started the ball rolling to get Irv to Virginia Mason as soon as he can travel up there. This Dr. K. also contacted OHSU in Portland and even the Mayo Clinic docs, who pioneered the autoimmune pancreatitis treatments. After he pulls all the information together he will be advising us as to what we should do to find a real diagnosis for Irv and hopefully find a way to treat it effectively and get Irv healthy again. I hope it doesn't require us going to the Mayo Clinic, but we will if we have to to get this fixed!

I'll send this now as the Internet is still up. More later.

Penny