Crazy day part 1

Today has been crazy. Yesterday and Friday were pretty uneventful. Just the usual stuff going on. Today, however...

Adam has been gone this weekend. He was back in Austin for Navy drill this weekend, so I was on my own. Yesterday the doctos told me that Cael's calcium levels were a little high and his potassium was a little low. The potassium can be fixed just by giving him some extra potassium in his TPN (IV nutrients). The calcium has been a bit more of a problem. They don't know, yet, why his calcium is high. There are a few possibilities. 1) The voriconizal he is on to prevent a fungal infection. Since he doesn have any fungal infection, they stopped that medication. 2) His vitamin D levels might be high, which is apparently related to calcium. They had him on supplemental vitamin D since he was low when he got here 5 weeks ago, so they have stopped that. They also took it out of his TPN. 3) A parathyroid problem. They cannot test the parathyroid or vitamin D levels until tomorrow.

High calcium can be a major problem. It affects the heart and the kidneys. They said that his nausea and lack of eating might be caused by the high calcium. He has also been pretty fussy the past few days, which may be caused by the high calcium. Right now they have given him something to help him pee a lot, which is supposed to help him get rid of the extra calcium. They are drawing blood and checking it every 6 hours to make sure the levels have not gone up at all. They just started the medicine at makes him pee about an hour ago. They drew blood about 30 minutes ago to check the calcium level. If it has not gone down, they are going to transfer him to the PICU until they can get it under control. The reason for that is the doctor wants him somewhere he can be under more supervision. In the PICU, there are less patients per nurse and an attending present at all times.