mysterious bleeding?

Hi everyone. We had a bit of a scare today. Dad's red blood cell counts (hematocrit levels) were decreasing yesterday after the surgery to replace his bone flap. They gave him a unit of blood, which should have raised his levels but instead they continued to decrease, indicating that he was bleeding internally...somewhere. [They weren't decreasing at a scary rate, so don't jump to the same scary conclusions as I did. ;)]

It's apparently relatively common to have some bleeding in the stomach after insertion of a PEG tube. So, this afternoon they called in a gastroenterologist and they looked through the tube to see if they could see evidence of, or the source of, the bleed. The nurses had pulled up some "coffee ground" substances from Dad's latest residuals, when they were checking to see if he was properly digesting his food, and apparently that is a sign of blood mixing with the acid in the stomach. And the gastroenterologist did, indeed, see a small section of the stomach that might have been bleeding earlier, so they clipped (or clicked? or cauterized? someone medical help me out here!) that section, but it wasn't really large enough to have been causing the drop in red blood cell levels that they were seeing.

They ran a CT scan on Dad's torso, to see if they could locate another source of bleeding. As Dad's family, we apparently aren't allowed to know the exact results of that test, but if they had indeed found something worrisome they would have called up to the ICU doctors, which they didn't. We were reassured enough by that observation that Mom & Brian (who had spent most of the afternoon and evening in the hospital waiting for news), as well as Dawn & Jim, went on home for the night. They gave Dad another 4 units of blood and will check his red blood cell counts again in the morning.

So, at this point we don't really know what was causing the mysterious drop in hematocrit levels. We'll just hope that the levels just as mysteriously stabilize overnight.

In other news, Dad is also running a bit of a temperature, and they're a little worried that he might have a blood clot in his other leg. He also has a rash that started out on his back, and has now spread to his chest and arms. But, he came through the surgery to replace his brain flap with flying colors, so the weird "dent" in his forehead is gone yay. :) Please, please, please continue to send healing prayers/vibes/thoughts for my dad, knowledge and wisdom for his doctors & nurses, and patience for all of us, his friends and family. Thank you everyone.

--Kristy