My dad is in the hospital in the Intensive Care Unit. Needed the ambulance to come get him this morning. He had a bad reaction a few days ago to a medication prescribed for him, bad hallucinations, confusion. My dad has Parkinson's so at first I chalked it up to a bad episode, and we had him scheduled for a follow up with his Neurologist next week anyway. When it finally occurred to me that it was these meds possibly causing the problem, I looked it up online and he had all the symptoms. The doctor said to discontinue the meds (of course I already had) and it should be out of his system within 12-24 hours. In the meantime he got weaker, had confusion, loss of appetite. The medicine had been prescribed by his Urologist so his Primary Care doctor wouldn't give opinion on it, the Urologist said it would be out of his system, and we had an appointment with him on Tuesday anyway. On Tuesday my dad was too weak to move around without my help, but still seemed like himself, so he wanted to change the appt to Weds and I did. Yesterday, he was weak again... I should have just taken him to the hospital, but neither doctor seemed too concerned with his symptoms. Overnight the wheels fell off the bus, he woke up at 5am this morning with fever, diarrhea, fatigue. At this point I was thinking infection. He was too weak to get in the car, so I couldn't drive him to the ER. My dad's blood pressure dropped to 80/40 and they had to give him meds to raise it. They said he has a raging kidney infection that is actually life threatening. The ER doc was very concerned. They actually asked me if he had any DNR order in place. I give kudos to the hospital, we have top notch doctors here only 2 minutes from our house. They started a central line, pumped him with antibiotics and the meds to raise his heartbeat. Once he was stable they moved him to ICU. He will be there at least until tomorrow. I am only home briefly to tidy up and make some phone calls. They told me that if I had not got him to the hospital today, this infection was advancing so fast, he would have died. I am sort of furious with his doctors that they didn't take a more proactive stance, suggesting I get him to the hospital rather than "wait and see", but right now I am exhausted and worried, and want to know he is out of the woods before I take issue with his doctors. Once he is out of ICU *god willing* he will be in the hospital for at least several days.
I know there are many posters of faith here that are familiar with my situation of caring for my dad... so I'm just asking if you would please keep my dad in your prayers for healing. It's amazing how things can go bad so quickly. Sorry for the longer post, just needed to vent and will take all the prayers I can get. Thanks in advance.
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