Hello I have gone through your question and understand your concerns..
As you have already mentioned your elderly cousin is in congestive
heart failure.
Heart pumps blood to all our organs. As the heart is in failure peripheral organs in his body like liver
kidney skin are not getting enough amount of blood.
Blood in our body carry all the required nutrients,
oxygen to the organs. So the organs are not getting properly nourished. It is like a state of
ischemia for the organs which causes
injury to the cells in the organs resulting in altered liver and kidney functions.
As heart is not pumping blood, there is a lot of blood pooling in the peripheral veins which can move out from veins into the intercellular spaces causing swelling in dependent parts of his body.
Skin is also not getting adequate nutrition because of failure of heart which causes the skin to break and the collected fluid to ooze from skin.
If a person is in heart failure his appetite can be reduced and there can be
weight loss.
The symptoms will improve as he recover from his failure state and his heart
ejection fraction improves.
Continous care from a cardiology team is required along with proper nursing care to avoid skin breaks and bed sores.