Wed May 16 - CRITICAL 48 HRS FOR RAY

Family and Friends,
PLEASE PRAY FOR RAY!!!!  His liver numbers (billirubin) continue to increase daily and the drs have been unsuccessful in either determining the cause or the treatment.  I have been told today that the next day or two are critical and he is fast approaching what they termed the 'point of no return' for his liver to be able to recover.  You cannot live without a liver and he would not be a transplant consideration.  I asked if he could take some of my liver so we wouldn't be taking from the donor program but they still said no.  Also he is too weak for that kind of major surgery right now anyways.  They are giving him steroids to help his liver right now and it could be that he needs another 2 days for that to work.  He may have host vs graft disease, where his new immune system is attacking his liver as not recognizing it as his donor.  They treat that with the steroids and it can help.  They can't know exactly what's wrong with his liver unless they do a liver biopsy but they said he can't survive that right now due to his bleeding...his blood is not coagulating well so it wouldn't clot.  They are still concerned he isn't waking up from the sedation being lifted yesterday morning.  They were going to do another CT scan on his brain but canceled it today as they don't think he's stable enough.  They may try tomorrow.  It was to see if his brain bleeding has gotten any worse and that's why he isn't waking up.  It could just be that its taking longer for his sedation medication to leave his system also.  He still has alot of fluid that is very slowly being drained...the dialisys had to be stopped this am for a while due to his blood pressure going down.  They restarted it but very slowly due to his blood pressure issues.  His EEG results came back this am and he has no sign of seizures but his brain activity was 'slower' than normal.  Again, could be becasue of the sedation and medications he's on....they have no real way of know if its more serious becuase they cannot do an MRI due to his defibrilator in his chest.

On the bright side, Ray's white blood cells and immune system have really come in strong...he has 17,000 white blood cells today!  The dr said these may be elevated due to the injections they were giving him daily to promote this production early...they've stopped these shots now...and tomorrow they may go down a bit and settle in at the normal levels.  Normal ranges are 4500 - 11,000.  He's above normal now, but he can use them to help fight!!

PLEASE PRAY FOR RAY!!  HE NEEDS ALL YOUR PRAYERS NOW MORE THAN EVER.  THE NEXT 48 HRS ARE MORE CRITICAL THAN EVER. 

GOD IS BIG ENOUGH!

thanks, Teri