Tuesday March 24th 1:45 a.m.

Post updated by Sandy Klamert

We had to make the decision yesterday afternoon to go ahead and have the CAT scan done with i.v. contrast so they could find out what is causing his liver to shut down. The risks are great for permanent kidney failure however we felt we had to do it or risk complete liver failure. We will not know if there will be any side effects/kidney damage for 24 hours or so from this scan.

We are still awaiting those results from the CT scan but should have them sometime tues morning once we get up to the hospital. We got a call about 11 p.m. from his nurse telling us that after a series of events they have determined he is bleeding internally most likely from his bowel tract somewhere. They had to start a blood transfusion and that is all we know for now.

When we left last night around 9 p.m. he was finally resting comfortable after a long day of intense pain that meds were not seeming to touch. He did seem to gain a little more awareness in the afternoon after they swithced his pain med from Morphine to Phentonyl. This one is supposedly also less traumatic for the liver.

We are very concerned he may not pull through this and he is declining daily. PLEASE pray for a miracle and that he would recover. We still find ourselves in shock and awe mode of how we exactly got here when he was pretty healthy just a few weeks ago and planning to come and attend the opening Astros baseball game series with Scott.

We have family beginning to come in. Scott's youngest sister, Kristen from Louisiana and his aunt, Kathy from California.

The next few days will tell a lot and the decisions ahead will be many. They have talked of doing a procedure called endoscopy to look down his throat with a scope to determine the bowel issues. They also today will let us know if this CAT scan showed what they need to know about the liver blood flow in and out and what treatment will be required. If this did not give them what they wanted to know the next step would most likely be a biopsy. All of these are risky procedures given all the medical problems he is currently enduring. We are finding ourselves having to constantly ask does the potential benefit outweigh the potential risk and that is just not a fun place to be.