Chase's Potassium is Back in the Normal Rangeq

We’re happy to report that Chase’s potassium returned to the normal range today (3.8) without very many supplements (1-2 per day) and backing off further. We’re continuing to find easier ways to get the potassium into his system (including "nu salt" in most of his drinks). His appetite is also continuing to improve (although still not nearly what it was before the bouts with nausea). It’s been a struggle lately to get Chase to eat much of the “creative recipes" that are designed to get all the right vitamins and minerals into his system while minimizing the supplements (which is probably why we’ve had the low trending on some of his key labs).

Carol did an outstanding job during the past week balancing the situation – keeping Chase eating the right stuff (when his system was able to hold it down) and then getting him to take the supplements to boost him up. This is in addition to trying to manage his states and keep his spirits up – a particularly challenging situation when he’s sick, crabby and not wanting to do much. It was a real roller-coaster of a week, to say the least, but it ended on a high note and his labs are starting to reflect the results of the hard work.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the hemoglobin results yet because the vile that was drawn got clotted and it will need to be re-drawn tomorrow. This was the first day of our new home-care nurse (the previous one took a new job) and hopefully this isn’t a bad omen. It took a while for Chase to warm up to the last one and we still never got to the point where we felt comfortable with her handling the port access changes, so we continue to rely upon Aunties Cathy and Corrine for needle changes on the weekends. We’re hoping and praying things stabilize with this new nurse so we can have more flexibility going forward. Another option might be for Carol to gain proficiency at the needle change process (which I’m confident she could do) – I’m certainly not up for the job (I usually leave the scene as soon as the needle comes out).

We’ll see how it goes, but for now at least the results we’ve obtained from today’s analysis were pretty good and hopefully the balance of the results tomorrow will be as well. Thanks for the continued prayers and support! We're over another speedbump on our way to Chase's full recovery.

Lots of love and gratitude

John & Carol Sammmut
Chase & Barbara Ann