I'll try to make this concise with primarily relevant details.
Well my dad is currently in the ICU because he felt extreme weakness and was coughing up blood. He was diagnosed with Wegeners and started treatment for it about 8 months ago, but it has been causing problems since about 12 months ago with his sinuses and a thing in his lung. He was taken cytoxan and prednisone for treatment, things were looking good so they lowered the prednisone, but his anca and sedimentation rate were not improving, but he felt fine. The doctor wanted to start him on Rituxan because those levels were not perfect. The doctor wanted to wait some amount of time between treatments and due to some miscommunication he was untreated for 5 weeks no Rituxan or Cytoxan, but still on 20 mg of prednisone, once a day. On the 5th week his Wegeners flared up with coughing up blood, his blood count went down to 8.4 he was admitted to the ICU but was released 4(thursday morning till sunday afternoon) days later since his blood count went up to 8.5, but still coughing up blood. 2 days later(the following wednesday morning) he felt extreme weakness and told us to call 911, in the emergency room they found out he was only getting 40% oxygen level, they thought it was pneumonia at first, the scaring in his lungs spread to both sides, and his blood count went down to 6.5. They intubated him, gave him a blood transfusion and started plasmapheresis, with high doses of steroids(60 mg of prednisone x4 a day), along with a Rituxan treatment once a week, also gave him a lot of sedatives to keep him calm? His kidneys are doing fine, and I believe there was never any sign of kidney failure.
It's been 8 days, his blood count is going up at 9.8 currently. There are no longer any, or very little signs of his lungs bleeding. He's been off the sedatives for 36 hours and still not waking up, they gave him a diuretic to get rid of accumulated fluids in his body. He has been going under plasmapheresis every day, they are switching to every other day now. I just learned today that plasmaphersis is considered a "last resort treatment". So I am a bit more concerned. From my knowledge and searching the past 8 months, most people die of wegeners because of "renal failure", and his kidney's are fine.
Some other things is he naturally has high blood pressure. So they work on controlling that as well. The machine is giving him 35% O2(down from 65% when he first was admitted, normal air is about 21% oxygen) and peep level is at 5% down from 10%. Not sure on other important factors about his tube machine. Looking at the actual measurement they might increase it back up to 40% or 6 peep level, since it's sticking around 90-93%. I'm leaving out his age since I don't want agest results. Our family has decent genes which cause our organs to be younger and perhaps stronger than others, also he doesn't smoke or any other risky behaviors. Last joke a nurse told him was "your heart sounds good, you have the heart of a teenager".
So I ask you guys, what questions should I ask the doctor? What results or numbers should I be worried about?
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