What a Week!!! (continued)

Continuing from Monday: I had been told before I left that they were going to give him another Cat Scan the next day. They would call me with the results. They said if I didn't hear from them by 3:30 - 4 pm to call and ask about it.

On Tues., Dr. Barney called and said that John was getting some fluid on his lungs and his legs so they were going to get him up and moving around. (He had been laying down for more than a week.) He also said the CT showed that there was still some blockage in the kidney. He was going to talk to the Urologist and probably go ahead and send him to St. Mary's. He also said that his PSA (Prostatic specific antigen (PSA): This is an enzyme produced by both normal and abnormal prostate tissues)numbers were rising.

For those of you who don't know, he had Prostate Cancer 10 years ago. After treatment, it went into remission. It started raising it's ugly head again about 9 months ago. His numbers during that 10 year period had stayed to below 1.0.

When I asked the Dr. what his number was, he told me 7.0. (My darling John is going to pass away from the big C.) And from the looks of things, we will be lucky to have him around for another year. The doctor also said he has gone downhill tremendously in the past year. (He has not seen him for 6 months, so it is more noticeable to him. Not that I am BLIND and can't see that for myself. If you go look at the layout I made of him called HOPE you can see quite a difference from then to now.

Yesterday, I called in to see what was going on. John didn't answer the phone so I called the nurse's station. While I was talking to the Nurse the urologist called in. So I waited while she talked to him. Then, she told me what the doctor had to say: They were going to try to replace the stent. Because the original stent had been left in more than six months, the Urologist had a hard time removing it so he could replace it. So now they think that because it was hard, that perhaps when they put the new one in, the tip had bent, and that was why it was clogged.

The nurse then went and woke him up so I could talk to him. I explained to him what they were going to do. He decided that he wanted me to go back to town. If they were going to put him under, he wanted me there. So I headed back to Grand Junction (GJ).

When I arrived, he told me they changed the decision. They had a pow-wow with the Dr's involved and he was going to St. Mary's to get a nephrostomy tube placement. He will have that tube coming out of his back for the rest of his life, and it has to be flushed (by me) daily. This procedure would happen the next day.

Thursday - I am sitting here blogging, while waiting for them to release him back to the VA. I will have to grab a photo of this hospital, for today's photo. They are adding on to it. The new addition is at least double the size of the old portion. It was already the largest building in GJ. Now it will be the highest. Speaking of which, I have the photos for 365. I just have to post them. I will make that the next post. And actually, I am done with this post, so I will say TTFN. Tess