TRACEY UPDATE - END OF DAY on FRIDAY

Please continue to keep Tracey in your thoughts and prayers.  For those of you recently added to this list, we want you to know that Tracey and I try to live our lives like an open book.  Those of you familiar with Drew's Daily Life Updates from my college days will understand that more fully than others.   And that philosophy of ministry can also be found on to www.DrewandTracey.com/Wedding/ where you can look at what we had read during the ceremony, and go through the story of how we met and all that fun stuff.  

We've had so many genuine, sincere offers of "whatever you guys need, just let us know." so much so that i'm loosing track, so you might see me doing more things via email than phone so I have a way of keeping track of things.   You have no idea what a blessing you all are just by praying for us.   Thank you guys so much.  You can't begin to imagin what it means, but we tear up as we read your replies and your prayers for us.   This is just one more example of the amazing things that God does when each member of the body is in the trenches, doing their part, and being open to his Spirit's guiding. 

This email has five parts.   If you're not in the immediate family, feel free to pick and chose what you read.   That's why we have section titles and dividers.
1> Business end gifts, cards, visits, phone calls
2> subscribe, unsubscribe, update archive, why the strange email address, what to tell the prayer list folks.
3> Layman's update for today
4> a few extra technicals and numbers for those who understand what it means
5> Excerpts from instant messenger conversations we had to day, and how we responded to questions "our kids" asked us.

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1> BUSINESS END - GIFTS, CARDS, VISITS, PHONE CALLS
Don't worry about cards or flowers... Cards cost $3 a piece at some places (which is silly - adopt a compassion kid instead) and then we either keep them in a box somewhere forever (probably never to be looked at again which is even sillier) or recycle them, and with her allergies, sometimes the flowers just aggravate stuff anyway.    come-on now... you know you do the same thing with all the birthday and Christmas cards you get.  Am I right ?  :-D

THE BEST GIFT YOU CAN GIVE... right now is a reply back via email that includes your thoughts and prayers, but most importantly something uplifting and funny to make her smile.   We got an elf gram today, and a cute baby photo along with some very touching and encouraging emails.  But the Elf gram won top honors.   Grab your digital camera... go take a really silly looking photo of yourself, maybe holding a piece of notebook paper with a silly caption on it, or something... get creative... as those types of emails really seem to brighten her day.   These emails should be sent to Drew@DrewandTracey.com so that we can just go to one place to check them.   I explain the email dilemma in business part 2.   GZ and Crossfire kids - I hope you'll lead the pack in these endeavors.   Even if you just google a free online greeting card company.     Note that you might not get a personal response, but you making Tracey smile means the world to us right now.   (that makes it sound like she's really depressed or something... she's not... but I do want her to have plenty of opportunities to laugh throughout the day).  

We had a few visitors today, and that went pretty smooth.   Now we're in a different room, on a different floor, with different nurses, but I don't anticipate an issue.   We can have people 2 at a time in the room, from 10a-8p.   Tracey seemed to do well with people here, so assuming she's having a good day tomorrow, I hope that will continue.  I don't want to overwhelm her, and I also don't want you stuck waiting if they send us to some far corner of the hospital for an extra test.  So PLEASE CALL MY CELL before you come to make sure that timing is good and everything.  If you want to schedule with me for later in the day, or Sunday, or Monday, email me back so I can try to spread her visitors out throughout the day.  

Tracey's cell phone is being used for our internet connection.  I'm fielding all calls on my cell phone.   We're not using the hospital room phone because the ringer is loud and might wake her if she's sleeping.   Her phone has an message saying don't leave a message and to call my phone instead and gives my number.   If you have my number, just call me if you need us.   Family, if you need intra day updates, call my cell or email and I'll bring you up to speed as I'm able.   If you don't already have my cell number, then contact us via email.

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2> BUSINESS END - SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, UPDATE ARCHIVE, ETC
If you didn't get this directly from us, don't be offended.  It's just late and I'm tired.   Just email me with "SUBSCRIBE Tracey Updates" in the subject line, and I'll add you to the list.   I can take people off the list too, if you don't want the updates.  Trust me, We won't be offended.  It's fine.  Any and all emails about Tracey should go to this address, regardless of how I know you.  

-- For now, I'm doing updates VIA email... I won't have time to put anything on DrewandTracey.com till she gets outta the hospital, so just check your email. 

-- If you add her to any prayer lists, please skip the details and just ask them to pray for "for healing for her, peace for us & our families in distant places, wisdom for the doctors, but most importantly for good communication between the doctors, the nursing staff, and us."  We'll keep it generic on the prayer lists... I started trying to count how many people she had praying for her, but it quickly got out of hand.   As Joyce remarked in an email to church staff yesterday, the circle of influence, as represented by my distribution instructions at the top of yesterday's update, speaks volumes to what God is doing.   Thank you for your prayers.

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3> LAYMAN'S UPDATE FOR TODAY

I use more and more notebook paper each day.  Occasionally I miss something, but we're doing pretty good at journaling stuff.   I crashed at Colesbery (my parent's house in New Castle, DE just 10 minutes from the hospital. ) She was woken up at midnight for Blood pressure and again at 4am.   At 5 she called me.   I was in by 5:40, spoke to the nurses at shift change.    Her breakfast of skim milk, raisin bran, and a hard boiled egg was okay.  She's not a fan of the skim milk, but it was the lesser of two evils when compared to whole milk, and she didn't trust the other menu items offered.   Every other time she got up for the bathroom, she coughed some.  Twice she came up with dime sized flem.  The second time, it had a splatter of blood in the center.  

We met with her doctor at 10:50.   He answered many questions that we'd written down over the previous 24 hours of darkness where we didn't know everything we wanted  to know.   He was patient and worked with us through my version of 'the inquisition.'  He said the pharmacy often randomly substitutes drugs people are on or prescribed, for other drugs with similar purposes when they don't have what they need (and I wonder if one is cheaper).   Thursday AM, they came in with Clariton instead of Alegra, and FlowNase instead of Nasonex.   I explained that she'd worked with her PCP (primary doc) and her alergist to get her meds working correctly, and that Clariton didn't work for her, and that Alegra D didn't work for her, that only Alegra would do, so he changed the orders to allow her to take her own meds which she had.  Victory #1.  The flem concerns led him to order a Cat Scan... and then at noon, we got a call to find out what she'd been eating and drinking, and were then ordered to cease all food and drink until 4pm so they could do the Cat Scan.  (which means she is 4 hours low on fluid at the end of the day and probalby why she is exhasted tonight, but i'm getting ahead of myself.)   He also left us with the impression this morning that we could "Take off the Kid Gloves"  and she was okay to walk to the door if she wanted (She doesn't want too), but that told me that getting up for the bathroom was less dangerous than I originally thought it might be. 

Somewhere in here, her first two visitors showed up and spend some time with us and allowed us to process outloud a little of what we'd learned from the doctor.  The floor chaplin also stopped in for a visit and to pray.   (As time goes on, i'm bumping into more an more spirit filled folks down here, as opposed to the stuck-in-the-rut-denominationals which is really nice.)    12:20PM she fell aslseep exhausted..  an Hour later, she was back up and had energy again and was more helpful when she had to sit up, or get outta bed, and stuff.  2:30pm they came and asked her the routine questions they do before give you a CAT.  4:50 we met with the Hemotologist who basically told us nothing.   He would order blood work... and then since he's not in on the weekend, we could catch him at his office next week to go over the results... so he might tell us what caused all this after the fact... but it doesn't sound like he'll be actively involved in the process of getting her back to normal in the short term.   And I drilled him with a few questions too.   As soon as we were done, she was on a gurney down to the scan area.   They didn't let me go in with her, but it turns out they needed to put an IV in the middle of her other arm so that they could inject the dye.  While she was in there, I went out to the lobby and met with a few youth group teens who came down for a visit and brought us some stuff from the house.  I was back before she was done... and I'm told that even before she was off the table, phone calls were being made at a frantic pace.  (Don't worry - nothing bad happens... but a long lead up is involved... don't you wish all books gave away the ending like this ?)

Ernie was upstairs waiting for us because he didn't get the message about the Cat Scan, but that ment he was at the nurses station when the phone started ringing and got me some of the inside scoop early on.   I didn't yet know anything was wrong until we got back upstairs.   Tracey said something that perked my interest.   The tech said non-chilantly that the doctor had already been called.  I grabbed our friends from the lobby and we all headed upstairs.   Passing the nurse's station was my first indication of trouble and they told us we were "Changing rooms, going to a more acute floor and putting her back on a heart monitor.  Then Ernie gave me a few extra tibits.  When we got back, tracey's roomie was gone.  Sad we couldn't say goodbye, but so it was easier for us to have 8 guests in the room.  I started to draw my own obvious conclusions and dropped into "lets fix it" mode as I describe later in the Instant Message Question Response section below, and started ease dropping, packing, making sure tracey got dinner since she'd been without food since breakfast, and then allowed our guest to take care of her while I got us ready to move, and tried to learn things I wasn't supposed to know yet.  

Lots of drama... a doctor comes flying around a corner on a "STAT" order (get here now). and has a 10 word conversation with the nurses and then rebukes them for making it sound so urgent when it really wasn't... we didn't understand why is wasn't so fully urgent until he came and talked to us later and then we trapped him with an extra 10 minutes of quiestions, but I'll get to that.  However, the nurses still wouldn't fill me in.   So I waited till we got tracey loaded, and our guests following her down, and then I pulled the nurse and explained that Tracey's family lived 6 hours away and that I needed a point blank answer without any details of whether or not they needed to start the 6,7,8,9 hour drive down... and she said No and then dropped some hints and let me peice it together.   "Blood thiner is designed to break up a clot, and occationall peices can begin to travel." and since I knew they only scanned her chest, i can reasonable guess where they traveled to.   But the Doctor didn't seem too concerned.   His comments were to the effect of "We'll, she's already on Heprin, which is the treatment for this, so we're already doing what we're supposed to be doing, and we were doing it before we knew about this concern, so it's not a big deal, so you shouldn't have paged me STAT, and don't ever do that again.   The first group of friends had already said goodbye at this point and the 2nd group was following Tracey to the 2nd floor.

So I caught up with the group, and tried to help tracey transfer into her knew bed and the nurses gave me attitude that they had it under control, so when they left, I again reminded tracey to be very vocal about wanting my help and my presence when they are doing stuff because essentially, we're starting from scratch again, and we have to train a whole new group of nurses how to deal with us.   It took a while to get settled, give the new nurse the full history, family background, events leading up to this last week, etc.   Once that was done, our 2nd group of friends came in to say goodbye.   It took us about 30 minutes to get settled, get the supplies and things we needed for the new room, things it was missing etc, and start to slow down.   More on unpacking is below in the AIM converstaions. 

The Crazy doctor came in and hoped to breif us and leave, but we nailed him with questions about treatment options, length of treatment overall, what the cat scan commotion was all about etc.   He got stuck in our room about 10 minutes longer than he wanted to be but thats just tough for him.   THE CAT SCAN REVEALED... that tracey has a Pulmonary Embolism (PE) caracterized by a "Moderate Clot Load" in her lungs.   Normally, that would be bad, hence the chinese firedrill which took place on her behalf.  However, tracey "Tolerated" the episode well... meaning none of her vitals have really changed much since we started this adventure.  She is breathing fine... Additionaly, she is already on the Heprin, which had this been suddenly discoved in anyone else, would have been the first method for treatment.   And she's been on heprin for 3 days which means the peices should continue to disolve and shouldn't have any real abilty to grow and that is why he flipped out on the nurses upstairs.  He talked us through several different treatment teirs based on what happens... but right now, thinks we are in good shape... that it dosn't hurt to be on a highly  monitored floor given the family history, and that he'd like to switch her from the IV to a twice a day injection so that Tracey won't need to have as much blood drawn. 

We called both our parents, gave the updates, tracey meanwhile finished another cycle and is now in an exhaused phase.   We'll see what tomorrow holds.  :-)   The funny part is that before all this happened, we were talking about the possibliy of Tracey doing some tutoring from the hospital to help take her mind off stuff, and give her something productive to do so she feels more useful, as she has some students who have midterms in about 10 days but with tonight's event, I think we are scrapping that concept.  But it held such promise.  Oh well.  We'll find another way to help keep her on track.

Pray foremost against those clots in her lungs, and also for a smooth disolving of those in her leg, and complete healing of the veins down there with no scaring.
Pray for a good relationship with the nurses on all three shifts on this floor & freedom for me to continue to be tracey's primary source of assistance as needed.
Pray for us to receive frequent regular updates from her primary doctors in this.
Pray for her left elbow as it's taking a beating with all the blood draws for labs and things.
Praise God I didn't get dad's queezy stomach when it comes to needles and IV's and stuff.

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4> A FEW EXTRA TECHNICALS FOR THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS

12:25 AM BP 128/74, temp 37.1 C
3:52 AM BP 127/81, temp 37.2 C
7:10 AM BP 97/55, temp 99.4 F
3:25 PM BP 135/77 temp 36.9 C
7:37 PM BP 129/65 temp 37.6 C
10:24 PM BP 106/58 temp 36.4 C, Pulse Ox 98
11:50 PM Pulse Ox 95

PTT has been at 77, 77, 77 and then 75, and this afternoon 85...  So we went from 16ml/hr heprin at 250 concentration down to 14 and we suspect they'll adjust it again after tonight's labs come back.  We need to discuss them drawing blood from alternating places each day as her elbow is getting pretty beat up.   Tonight's nurse says we want the PTT around 60 to 80ish...

I did not get a new INR number tonight... but we've been consistant at 1.2

Doc added Musinex today to help get out flem after hearing about the blood there this AM.

Dye was called OptiRay

Doc wants to do an EchoCardioGram on her tomorrow after seeing CAT scan results

Tracey did fine with the weird warming and cooling sensations that the CAT scan gives you.   Thought it was cool when they said "you're going to feel like you wet your pants" and they were right, she did fell that way, but in reality everything was fine.

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EXCERPTS FROM INSTANT MESSENGER CONVERSATIONS TODAY
Q> When you had the "complication" tonight, why wouldn't they tell you anything??
A> Nurses can't give out information like that... Only Doctors... The CatScan showed something in her chest / lungs / heart, but no-one's allowed to tell us what they saw.   All we know is that they aren't panic'd so we shouldn't be, and they moved her to another room on another floor where they have better monitoring equipment,  and they said the doctor who is allowed to tell us the information won't be in till tomorrow morning.  I guess they don't want a nurse to either tell you wrong information, or tell you partial information which might lead you to mis-conceptions of "we're okay" or worse, "oh no we're dying," and doctors supposidly are "better trained" to be able to share that information with you and making sure you don't freak out, flip out, jump off a bridge, etc.   The good news is the doctor was able to stop in tonight, and we were able to get enough answers to put our mind at rest


Q>  How hard was it to move to a new room?
A>  Well, when Mom came in yesterday, I took advantage of the chance to run home while she watched tracey, kept her company, and more importantly had my questions ready in case the doctor stopped in.  I picked up a list of stuff that tracey wanted from the house.   Then today, we received a few packages from family members.   Tonight, 8 teens and adults from GZ came down to visit and one of the students agreed to stop by our house on the way down, and pick up some extra things tracey wanted, like her bathrobe in case we got adventurous and took her for a wheel chair tour of the floor she was on, just to get her outta the room.   So we had a lot of stuff including her books, Crow-shay-ing stuff, MP3 player, laptop, etc... So our visitors helped me pack stuff up in the midst of the commotion and feverish activity at the nurse's station and when Tracey's transport gurney arrived, we loaded everything up and took it down stairs.  I hung back to try to weezel any futher details outta the nurse, and then caught up with everyone.   Once we got downstairs, it took a good 20 minutes to bring the new nursing staff up to speed on the entire history of this event, as well as tracey's extensive medical history with asthma and alergies, drugs that caused her side effects (technical alergies in my opinion), and things she was actually alergic too.  Once all that was done, our friends game in to say goodbye, and then it took another few minutes to locate a bedside commode for the room, get her a few cups of water and ice, and track down a few other nesseities.   Once the dust settled, and tracey was resting back in bed, I rearranged the furnature in the room, setup the gifts she'd gotten in what display space was available (this is a smaller room), put her books, clothes and entertainment away, hung her sleep mask, bandana, and headphones on the tv over her bed, and then setup the office so we could get on AIM and email.  This unpacking, organizing and decorating was probably the hardest part of the move.   Now she's in, and back in her routine, but I can tell it was a hard evening for her.  The nurse asked me to wake her up for a blood pressure test and to listen to her lungs, and it took more work than ussual to wake her up.   She is now in an "Exhausted" rotation.  Her last exhaused cycle was about 12:30 this afternoon and she bounced back real strong after her nap.   Assuming she gets good rest tonight and is able to get back to sleep after the 3 AM blood work call, I think she'll be back to normal in the morning.

Q> Okay - so how's Drew doing?
A> The drama tonight took some extra energy and tired me out a little, but now that we are moved in, and settled down, seated, with the room decorated again, and "The Office" set up, and Tracey back into a "routine" we are good.  People like say that I keep an insain schedule, and things in my day to day life... craming a lot of stuff in.   Tracey and I work hard, and play harder, and it's all done with excellence... but even that schedule could be considered a light load as compared to the past few days.   So I'm good.   God is sustaining me.   I'm really hoping we don't get a roomie tonight and I get to stay here in the room with her, as it will make things slightly easier over the next 9 hours.   It was good to see people.   It's good to IM with you and just share and process some of the day.  Tracey said I moved from an 8 up to the high 9's on the scale of "how good of a husband have I been today" so that's an ego booster... and the nurses are glad to have a family that is taking such an active role in Tracey's care and being an advocate for her.   Pastor Jeff reasured Tracey saying that he can tell that I'm very much on top of things.   And doing that takes work, but as weird as it sounds... I enjoy taking care of her.   At home, on any other day, i might procrasinate getting up to get her a drink, or something else... but in this situation, God's making me into a better husband and there is a joy that comes with that.   And that joy wipes out any aches, pains, or occational flashes of emotional mush that I might allow myself to feel.   It's hardest when the Emotional Mush starts to win and leak out, as that makes everything else that I want to do, or need to do, that much more difficult.   When we had all the drama upstairs tonight, it was much easier to switch into "let me take care of details" mode, especially with a few guests here to keep Tracey entertained and distracted, then it was to process the emotion of "the nurses seem to think something is wrong."   I dealt with it by sticking to the "what do we need to do next" plan while GZ folks hung out with Tracey... I followed nurses and easedropped on phone calls...  That was much less taxing on emotional and spiritual reserves than processing the emotions of the moment would have been.  What does all that rambling mean?  I don't know.   But God does... and he's in the middle of it... and He's been nice enough to let me feel like and think that I have some control over the situation through note taking, question asking and nurse bothering, but when I flop down in the chair at the end of Tracey's most recent trip through her three hour "routine" of eat, drink, blood test, blood pressure, tempature, sleep, and then start over... God gently reminds me that it's still his ball game.  He still owns the park, the team, the coaches, the tickets, and the parking lot, and He's just letting me throw out the ceremonial first pitch.   So to answer your question... I'm good.  Tired, but good.  and it's a good tired, not a bad - i'm gonna pass out - tired.  It's a good tired.  A joyful tired.

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Love you guys.   Know we value you!   Especially if you actually read this whole update.   The detail is mostly to meet the needs of our immeidate family who live far away.  The rest of you just get to enjoy the benefit / suffer the tourment of these long winded updates.   And if you didn't get this directly from us, don't be offended.  It's just late and I'm tired.   Just email me with "SUBSCRIBE Tracey Updates" in the subject line, and I'll add you to the list.   I can take people off the list too, if you don't want the updates.  Trust me, We won't be offended.  It's fine.   I understand completely, especially seeing the length, and depth of them. 

TEENS - SEND US PHOTOS OF YOURSELF or Free E-Cards THAT WILL MAKE US LAUGH :-)  (Everyone else too :-)
Visitors - call me first to schedule


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-- Drew & Tracey --
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1Thes 2:6-12 We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.

-- Good things come to those who wait --
Jacob served seven years for Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. - Gen 29:20

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