TL;DR  back in the hospital, kidneys are cranky but not damaged, we have lots of questions without answers yet, but they're doing lots of tests.

Hey everybody, hope you had a good Labor Day weekend.  We did, despite a lot of non-optimal circumstances.  Dan was here for four days, which was just about everything Linda could have asked for, and she was released from the hospital Thursday night.  Instead of going back to our sweet Mosaic apartment at our friend Dixie's, which is on the second floor, we've been hugely blessed by some friends who have a single-level home, extra room, and big hearts.  

She is walking short distances with a walker and a spotter, but her knee is still very painful and physical therapy is a lot of work.  I took the day off on Friday and Dan took her in to the hospital for her outpatient fluids.  Apparently they were being sappy and someone told them to get a room, which is either why I'm glad I stayed home that day or a reason I shouldn't leave them unsupervised ;-)

We spent the weekend quiet and at home, Linda mostly sleeping and moving between bed, armchair, and table.  She was very, very tired, woozy, and confused, but glad to be out of the hospital and with Dan.  I was worried about her- she was falling asleep mid-sentence and with food in her mouth, not following conversations, sometimes thinking someone had spoken when no one had, sleeping 20 hours a day- but she didn't have a fever and I hoped that she was making up for a huge sleep deficit and her body was just enforcing total rest for a couple of days.  Because of the holiday our options were basically "wait til tuesday" and "straight to the emergency room, do not pass go, do not collect $200".  I wasn't sure that the stress of going through the ER and admission process would be more productive than resting up over the weekend, but I also felt unqualified to make that call.  

Sunday night I gave her an extra dose of iv fluids- we do home infusions on the days that she's doesn't go to the hospital- because she was sleeping so much that I worried she wasn't drinking enough.  It was getting late and the fluids weren't finished, so we all went to sleep.  In the middle of the night Linda unscrewed the wrong bit of her port trying to disconnect the empty fluid ball: she clamped it off quickly but there was enough blood spilled to look pretty gory.  I put a clean cap on it and left it clamped, and we went back to bed: the port being compromised is a serious infection risk, but our best bet was to wait until the CVC clinic was open in the morning.

We found some dear friends in the waiting room, who were a huge comfort to Linda while we waited to see what they needed to do for her CVC.  Karen also reassured me that I wouldn't be overprotective or mean for insisting that we go to the ER, which I really needed to hear.  

 We had a particularly good nurse, Mimi, who stayed with us for a couple of hours cleaning and unclogging her line, listening to music, and calming Linda down.  It was a hard morning, and she wasn't in good shape, and Mimi was amazing.  Unfortunately, while we were there mama felt suddenly sick and threw up everything in her stomach, which aside from being miserable and a new symptom, is a really efficient shortcut to getting dehydrated.  

That totally settled my mind against going home, so we left there and went down to the emergency center and spent the rest of the day getting tests and getting her rehydrated.  They decided that they needed to admit her for at least one night to get her hydrated and figure out why she'd been so confused and out of it- it could be fairly straightforward things like the dehydration and meds or it could be many, many other things, so she got a head CT right away and an MRI Tuesday.  

On Tuesday there were enough red flags in her bloodwork that it was clear this would be a multi-day stay.  Her head looks fine, most of the things they've tested have been fine.  Her kidneys are stressed out, but they can't see anything on the ultrasound, so they're testing for specific viruses that can cause kidney trouble and reassessing all of her medications to see if there's something they can change to take some pressure off.

One of the main struggles right now is keeping her pain controlled without using medications that process through the kidneys or increase her confusion: she's been taking Tylenol, which is pretty soft for the amount of pain she's in.  

Last night her oxygen saturation dipped too low and she had a nasal cannula of oxygen for some hours, but she's doing fine off of the oxygen today and they just took her down for a chest x-ray to check out her lungs.  There's currently no sign of any infection, but they're running blood and urine cultures.

She's definitely less confused and more herself since she's been rehydrated, but between the kidney stuff, lung stuff, and the fact that her blood pressure has been pretty high, I think we'll be here through the end of the week.  

Love you all, please remember to send only messages full of support and no expectations to Linda.

Bekah