Attempted Embolization

So, Gessner has continued to bleed from his lungs and had another really large bleed on Sunday. We headed to the ER and he was admitted. The medicine team talked to the radiology team and everyone decided that it was worth another look into Gess's lungs to see if any of the bronchial arteries were abnormal. They did a bronchocospy on Tuesday to do in and explore to see if they could narrow down the area to focus on and saw that the right lower lobe seemed inflamed. So, that was the area of focus. He went down to radiology around noon and didn't get back up to the room until 5:00 pm, so he was on the table for a long time. Unfortunately they were not able to locate anything to embolize. The good news is that he went through the procedure well and there were no complications.

He isn't actively coughing up blood and the strange spasms he has in his lung are not as frequent, so he will get to come home today. The frustration is that they were unable to find the source or bleeding, so it may very well come back again in a few days. That has been the pattern--big bleed, then hospital, then discharge, home for a couple days, then big bleed again, hospital again, etc.

Beyond that, we are just continuing with the transplant evaluation appointments. He had two scheduled for today and they are held in the main hospital, so we decided to go to them. Unfortunately someone somewhere canceled them! The nutritionist was able to see us and talked to us about what he needs to do now to gain weight and then some of the stuff for post-transplant. The nutritionist wants him to eat at least 3200 calories a day and that is going to be a real challenge for him. But, he needs to put on some weight, so hopefully he will be able to do it. To be eligible for listing he needs to have a BMI of 18. He's 18.9 today. But his weight has been down low enough to put him just about 18 in recent days.

Next week we meet with the lung transplant surgeon, diabetes clinic, dentist, lung transplant clinic, and liver transplant surgeon. He will also do his 6-minute walk test. We still need to have his bone scan rescheduled and he needs to see the pain specialist. He has an appointment for the pain specialist in mid-September, but we are trying to get that consult earlier so that we can wrap up the evaluation and see where the team stands on listing.