Sharmel Update 09/06; His idea of foreplay was "Brace yourself Ellie"
So last time I typed to you, the goal was to have an uneventful weekend and pray that Shar got some much needed rest. Well we were successful, sorta, her pain and discomfort continued to be a problem, but the dr on call ( her dr's collegue) worked with us remarkebly well and he bumped her morphine, wrote for tordal shots and did everything he could to keep her comfy. She was able to go upstairs on sunday afternoon, and things were looking decent, not great but fair. We ventured into tuesday with hopes that the CT would come back clean and perhaps the g tube could start shooting much needed drugs into her to qual her dry heaving. Well they found a small pocket of fluid under her omentum that he suspects is a reminent of the last time he contrasted her. He set things up for this morning to go back into CT to place a drain and relieve the pressure. It was a bit discouraging but not a major hurdle, figured that it would be just a few more days til it was ready to use. Well then "the clouds rolled in and the thunder rolled". Shar opted to have her foley removed yesterday morning due to her output being closer to normal and her desire to start moving as much as her body would let her, thought the urge to pee would be a motivator. Well during her second attempt on the toilet, around 4 pm, she had a dry heaving spell and due to the constent stress that her abdomen has been under due to the surgery and dry heaving, she ruptured 5 of her inner muscular sutures in her abdominal wall. Alot of ugly fluid came out and the dr rushed up the hosp to assess things. He immediately suspected that the sutures had ruptured (until he showed up, we had no clue what had happened, just that she felt a pop and whole lot of pain). He took her in last night and repaired the sutures, there was no damage to her surgery, as the dr put it, it was not a major set back, just a serious frustration. He placed two catheters running the length of her belly supplying drugs directly to the abdomen for comfort. He put her on a morphine PCA and is giving her a new pain med, which at the present time can not remember the name of. He put her back in the ICU overnight and this morning took her to CT and removed the first drain and placed a new drain at the new fluid accumulation point. He let her go back upstairs this afternoon. Just prior to leaving the hosp this evening, she began to have bad heaving spells that scared the **** out of her, so she had the dr paged and once again he came running. He see's not choice but to take a "calculated risk" and start pushing her nortripilin, (only thing thus far to ease her dry heaving) through the g tube. He wants to contrast the tube friday and if it's ready will then use it for more applications. His goal is to keep on the present track, hopefully easing her heaving, keeping her as comfy as can be, and monday/tuesday attempting a swallow to test her surgery. To date, he has done nothing with her surgery, there are no images to say that things are good and/or bad. He has left it alone and next week, we hopefully will see that it was a good decision to ignore it for two solid weeks. So thats where we are, Shar continues to fight and there continues to be optimism from her dr that she will overcome this hurdle and in the coming weeks, begin a diet and be re- introduced to what some call "a life". Thats the plan, don't know if i fully believe in it, but hey what haven't we seen, done and threw the damn t-shirt away from. If you would like to send flowers or a card, just shoot me a message and i'll get you the info.
|
:
