Updates as of Thursday May 29, 3:30pm AZ (12:30pm Hawaii)

It's been an interesting week. You may have already heard, but just in case, we visited the doctor for Dan's regular appointment yesterday and the doctors immediately hospitalized him to run a number of tests. The ammonia level is pretty high and Dan is/was close to coma, very confused, sleeping all day, very jaundiced and weak. This has been going on for a month or so now and we did not know we should have taken him in to have this checked, we thought it was the natural progression of the liver disease. So, long story short:

* Dan will be in the hospital for a few more days (fyi, no flowers allowed on his floor).
* Dan coughed up some blood clots on Sunday. The doctors did an endoscopy and found no bleeding in the esophagus (another complication of liver disease). The pulmonary doctor is doing a chest CT scan now to see if it is from the lungs, they don't think so, they think it may be from sinus drainage since his nose bleeds most of the time (another complication of liver disease).
* Dan's labs showed a bacterial infection, they are trying to find the source and the proper medication. This may be the cause of the blood in his urine.
* His blood sugar is high right now, nor normal for him, they think it's from the stress of the last few days. Please pray that this goes down, we sure don't want to confront diabetes now. Once the blood sugar comes down a little more and the doctor says ok, he can finally eat and drink (the last meal he had was breakfast Wednesday).
* His red cell count was very low again, so they gave him 2 units of blood yesterday, and today's labs looked better, but they have to keep monitoring this since he has those weird antibodies that eat the red blood cells and cause the bilirubin count to go high making him more "the golden boy" (Dan's name for his jaundiced self). I call the antibodies "Pac-Man".

I may have forgotten some stuff, I'll update again probably tomorrow. I'm heading back to the hospital now and will stay overnight with Dan again. You should see the huge private room he has! He even has cable tv with a regular remote, and movies on demand! "Hotel Mayo" is a class act.

Still soaring, crying a little, and trusting God alot,
Debbie and Dan