Bad News

We haven't kept up with the weblog the past few days because things have taken a rapid turn for the worse. I arrived here Monday evening, and all seemed fairly well. Ryan wasn't doing so well from an oxygen saturation standpoint, but there was nothing completely alarming about that. Late Monday night/early Tuesday morning, Ryan desaturated to the point where he needed to be put on a breathing mask that is two steps above (below?) the cannula. This was enough of a crisis to call Dr. Andreansky in at 3:45 a.m.

An echocardiogram the next morning showed fluid around Ryan's heart -- something we have seen before, but this time, there was much more -- so much that the cardiologist wanted to do an emergency procedure to drain it. For reasons too lengthy to discuss right now, we chose another less drastic option, which is the use of a continuous diuretic to attempt to slowly decrease the fluid in Ryan's body. The really bad news is that sfter the echocardiogram, Ryan had a CT scan which showed that he now has pneumonia. The chances of treating this pneumonia are not very good at this point. The doctors cannot tell whether it's bacterial, viral, or fungal pneumonia because none of the cultures are coming back positive. This means that they have to use multiple drugs for each type of pneumonia, many of which are nephrotoxic. It also indicates that some of the antivirals, antibiotics, and antifungals that Ryan already had been taking weren't working.

We have been told that Ryan is extremely sick at this point and may not make it, so Keith and I are both in the hospital now. For those of you who have been sending good thoughts/vibes, praying, or just wishing Ryan good luck, please crank it up because he needs you now more than ever.