Kagan Family Blog For Zayde

Welcome to the new Blog I've created for updates on Zayde's condition. It is my hope that rather that through a series of ongoing emails, we can all log into a centralized bulletin board like this, and get up to date info. Like I expressed in my email from yesterday morning, I think this will strengthen our communication as a family and keep ALL OF US better "in the loop".

Ground rules:

1. Be Nice. This is not a place for us to be venting our personal issues, gripes, arguments, etc... This is a constructive space dedicated to be a safe space for ALL members of our family to come and feel welcome.

2. No question or comment is "wrong". Let's respect everybody's varying levels of understanding.

3. Remember: We are ALL family. We all love Zayde very much and want him to have a speed and COMPLETE recovery. Our collective thoughts, prayers and love can and (I believe) will pull him through this.

That said, here I go with the latest:

Risa just called me with the news on Zayde. They just put in his chest tube and he's doing very well. Not a lot of pus drained out, but there was a lot of clotted blood. This is good and not good. It's good because it means that it's likely that there is no active infection going on. It's not good because he needs to get that clotted material out and there's no good way other than time and letting his body do the work of breaking it down. The hope is that he can do that in a time frame quick enough that he doesn't throw a clot of that blood to a portion of his lung (a PE= Pulmonary Embolism). Also, clotted blood is a great medium for bacteria to grow, so it puts him at added risk for contracting another infection.

He's on his way to get the fistulagrams (both esophageal and duodenal). When we hear, we'll update.

-E