A fall and a bump on the head.

Sadie's Kennel

One of the challenges that Lee and I face every day if his poor balance. With the encephalopathy  balance has been a big issue for Lee, he has been working with Physical therapy for several months but with his liver failure there is also muscle wasting that occurs.  Lee has fallen several time and had been lucky to not be hurt up until he fell and hit his head hard enough to leave a big goose egg. 
On January 10th while I was at work I got a call from Lee telling me he fell hard and hit Sadie's kennel, luckily she does not sleep in her kennel we use it when we are traveling,  have a lot of company or need to be going in and out of the house a lot.  I got home and found this, needless to say Sadie will have to use her travel kennel in the house.

Lee's Hematoma a couple hours later

On Valentines day I was getting ready to head to work and Lee was getting out of the bath (he likes to wait until I am awake to get in the bath) I was in fixing my hair when I heard a big crash, I went running into the other room to find Lee on the floor, this scared me to the bone.  Lee told me his arm was numb and that his head hurt really bad, I called work and told them what was happening, I then tool Lee to the Emergency room where they did a CT of his head and found that everything was stable and he just had a large hematoma on his head.  The numbness in his arm had resolved and the doctor felt that he hit it and the nerve was firing. Thank goodness that there was no bleeding in his brain.  In patients with liver failure the INR/ prothrombin time (PT)is usually elevated. If there is serious liver disease and cirrhosis, the liver may not produce the normal amount of proteins and then the blood is not able to clot normally. The INR is one of the labs that are used to calculate the MELD score.  This is the reason I was so worried about Lee hitting his head so hard.  

The plan going forward, Lee has to bath only when I am home and can be there to help.  We got him a handle that clamps onto the tub so that he can hang on when getting in and out. We also got Lee a walker he complained at first and neither one of us wanted to admit that he needed a walker, they are for old people. Lee has not fallen since using the walker, except when he has walked away from it. This will be an ongoing problem and a challenge that we will face everyday.