Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Update on Dad

I know Mom and Dad probably don't have much time to post updates on Facebook and such, so I'm trying to keep up here.

Dad is continually doing better every day, and his numbers are getting better as well, he is doing laps every day around the unit, and they are soon talking about putting him on the Freedom Driver. (The backpack)

Just in case you don't know how the Freedom Driver works, I'll tell you. The Freedom driver is a 25-30 pound backpack, that is connected just like the machine he is currently on. The Freedom Driver is also run on batteries just like the machine, but has a much longer battery life. Since the Freedom Driver runs on batteries, its not like you can just "Run out" of batteries, they have a secondary battery, a backup battery, and a backup-backup battery, then guess what? They also have a backup-backup-backup battery for the *first* Freedom Driver. Yes, we do have to carry around a second Freedom Driver that will serve as a backup for the first Freedom Driver. Then that Freedom Driver has a secondary battery, a backup-battery, a backup-backup battery, and a backup-backup-backup battery. Lots of backups. But that insures that if anything goes wrong, there are lots of backups that can fill in if ANYTHING goes wrong. Also, here is the worst case scenario:

Electricity goes out, we forget to charge the batteries, and the first freedom driver fails, and the second also fails. There is a crank where you can manually pump the freedom driver, and that does not fail, it is old fashion -no electricity involved.

So I hope that eases your minds a bit, even the worst thing that can happen with this piece of scrap metal, you can still keep it running. The beat, will go on.

Rejection:
You've probably seen my mom and dad use the term "Rejection" or the body rejecting the heart. This is where, the body sees the new heart as a intruder, and tries to kill it, like it would try to fight off a cold or the flu. The good news is, there are medications to control this, and pretty much always work if you keep taking the rejection pills.

Perry?
You have probably heard that Perry did not do well in his surgery with the heart transplant. I know what I was thinking when I heard that "Does that mean since Dad did well in the TAH surgery just like Perry did, does that mean Dad will do just as badly in the heart transplant as Perry?"

No.
It does not mean that Dad will do just as badly as Perry, and even if he does, Perry was pretty much a worst case scenario for the surgeon and still is getting better every day. Heres the thing: Dad has close to the same heart problem Perry had, but they both have different types within that. Almost every type of HCM is unique, and that sometimes makes it hard for the doctors to adapt to each individual HCM patient. Just because Dad and Perry are almost in the same situation, that does NOT mean that they will react to the surgery the same.

I hope that this post answered most of your questions, thanks for reading!

2 comments:

  1. This is a wonderful update Thanks somuch

    ReplyDelete
  2. Np, tried to answer as many questions as I could :D

    ReplyDelete