Update on Uncle Howard

Chris asked me to update the blog with the following post:

Howard has been in ICU in Hendersonville Hospital since Saturday evening with severe bleeding. The first endoscopy didn’t reveal a lot except that there was a lot of blood in his stomach. They did another one Sunday evening and could see there were three ulcers, but there was still quite a bit of old blood there. They could tell that there was no active bleeding then. They will do another scope on Wednesday, hoping to be able to determine if there are more ulcers and whether there is more bleeding.

He has been in terrific pain and is very uncomfortable. They are giving him as much pain medication as they can, but because of low blood pressure, they have to limit the amount. Yesterday and last night he was very miserable, but this morning he was resting seemingly well and peaceful. This evening, he was getting restless again and could not get comfortable.

They did dialysis for two hours last night to get rid of some of the fluid build up from all the IVs, so he was breathing better after that. They are dialyzing him again tonight, so I won’t see him again until morning.

As always, we appreciate all your prayers and concern.

Chris