Thursday, February 4, 2010

We're home...traveling to Hazard for PD training

Mark was discharged from UK Tuesday evening. As you would imagine, we were really anxious to get home and see Mark Thomas. A good friend offered us two great tickets to see UK play on Tuesday night. Much to my surprise, my husband-a huge UK fan- turned them down saying he would rather see Mark Thomas than John Wall! Yesterday, we traveled to Hazard for our first training session on peritoneal dialysis. We will be going to "PD Boot Camp" for at least 4 more days. We're hoping that the PD catheter will work without complication and that the weather will cooperate and we can travel over the mountain safely. Mark is completing blood work every day to continually monitor the consistency of his blood. He is now on an oral blood thinner. The cardiologists are continuing to monitor the clots in his heart. It is our understanding that the longer blood clots are present in your body the less likely they are to travel. The echocardiogram completed on Tuesday indicated no significant change in the size of the clots. The fact that the clots have not increased in size is great news. If the clots had grown or if new clots were present, Mark may have had to have open heart surgery. The presence of two clots is worrisome to say the least, but we are very thankful to avoid a major surgery. We're praying that the clots will resolve, but understand this may take time. As always, please pray for our family! We appreciate all the love and support from everyone. It has meant so much. We know God has a perfect plan for Mark. We are trying to trust in Him without losing patience or hope! Off to Hazard for now...I'll post more information about Mark's health soon!

3 comments:

Kelly said...

I'm so happy to hear you all are home. There is no place like home. I can't imagine how much you've missed your little guy. Continuing to lift you up in prayer, especially about the PT dialysis and the clots. Kelly

Jaime Penix said...

So glad you made it home!

Anonymous said...

Kellie, I hate to here about Mark. Ken is on blood thinner Warafin and will be on it for life due to blood clots. If you don't already know you can go to Hemosense.com and get Mark's doctor to write him a perscription for a blood monitoring machine, so he can check his blood from home. Ken has one of the machines and insurance did pay for it, he has Humana through state employee insurance group. I know it was a lot easier on us taking his blood from home than it was traveling to the hospital every day. It is just like a diabetic blood testing machine. Check on this it might help. I hope you all are doing okay and if you need anything feel free to ask. Take care.

Jamie Hightower