Ron has struggled with edema (swelling) ever since going back on TPN and we noticed it has been especially bad the last couple of weeks. After realizing it might be due to the fact I had elevated the head of our bed not long ago to help with reflux (I'm one quick cookie, only took me 2 weeks to figure out the correlation between elevated bed and edema in legs! ha!) we took the bed back down to floor level.
So now he's back to having severe reflux, to the point where he's not getting adequate sleep which is causing him to be quite lethargic. I purchased a wedge pillow yesterday but it didn't seem to help much; still up and down all night gagging and coughing. The elevation of the head of the bed worked really well for the reflux, but edema was such that his ankles were hurting all the time making it difficult to walk, so...... not sure which is the lesser of two evils. But I do know we don't want to go with diuretics unless absolutely necessary, we especially don't want to be dealing with "chasing fluids" when we get into the heat of summer; that just leads to dehydration and hospitalization! No Bueno!
His weight is staying consistently between 165-170 and he's down to typically yakking only once a week while staying strictly with protein drinks. Except for the edema issue, up until this week he'd been doing pretty well. In fact, he is now able to go to every other week blood draws! WOO HOO!
Please join us in praying we'll figure out what to do to get this reflux issue under control so we can both get some much needed sleep!
Much love,
Christie
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