Friday evening, Andrew got the liver abscess (from the leaking gallbladder) drained. His blood pressure had been low for days, and it must have dropped again when he got down to the procedure room because the interventional radiologist did not feel comfortable sedating him. So he did the procedure under local anesthesia only. Fortunately, it was tolerable, and this was a good, safer alternative.

After the procedure, Andrew's blood pressure dropped again to somewhere in the 70s over high 40s. The recovery room nurse didn't feel comfortable sending him back to oncology to be monitored overnight. Instead she called a rapid response so that an ICU doctor and nurses could evaluate him.

The ICU doctor was really concerned about the BP and gave him vasopressors and steroids. It took a pretty significant amount of pressors, but his BP responded and they transferred him to ICU for the night. I texted his cardiologist and oncologist to let them know we were there, and both said he was in the right place. The cardiologist looked up the attending doctor on the floor and said he was terrific.

By noon Saturday, they'd weened him off pressors and his vitals were stable enough to come back to oncology. It's been a quiet day and a half since, and Andrew is seeming much more like himself and hasn't had any fevers or chills since Friday afternoon. This has all given the doctors more reason to believe that this really was the source of the infection.

Tomorrow Andrew will have a trans esophageal echo to confirm whether there's any bacteria stuck to his heart. The doctors don't think they'll find anything, but clearing this hurdle is important to determining how long he needs to take antibiotics and when we may be able to go home.