today was a bit rough. they think dad has an obstruction in his small intestine. they gave him barium so they can track its progress through the digestive system with several x-rays. his last x-ray should be saturday morning. hopefully we will have results by saturday afternoon.

all the moving around for the test took its toll on my dad. it was exhausting and the moving around was painful. he had to have two ivs removed and two new ones put in. one of the ivs went bad, prompting the nurse to give my dad ten small shots in the area to make sure his tissue wont be damaged by the leaking fluids. (this was very painful for him.)

he didn't have any fevers today, and it seems his infection is under control. he'll be kept on antibiotics for awhile. however, the moving and iv problems caused lots of fluctuations in my dad's blood pressure. it was the first time i've seen it up to 120 since being in the icu, but it also dropped to the upper 70s several times today. now that he is settled, his blood pressure is normalizing again. they have been able to decrease his dose of dopamine (for his blood pressure). once he is stable and in the 90s without the medicine, he can go back to a normal hospital room.