What a Week!!!

John hasn't felt good since he had his small surgery. Mostly it is pain on his lower backside right on the hip. The doctor said it was probably the way they had him laying on the table. But it just wasn't getting any better.

Tuesday night he ate very little and went to bed at 6pm. When I got up, he ate only about a quarter of his breakfast and I called the VA. They made an appointment for him on Friday, because the Urologist wouldn't be there until then. They also suggested that I contact his primary care doctor because his white blood count was a little low. So I called his nurse and was told he wouldn't be there on Friday. So I told her I would just take him to the ER if I felt he needed to be seen after seeing the Urologist. (Our VA Medical Center is a small one.)

I couldn't get him to eat anything else that day. Between the pain, and only sleeping fitfully, he decided to go to bed at 4pm. At 11:30 that night, he had me help him get up and lay in his easy chair. He stayed there the rest of the night.

Thursday morning I told him I was taking him to the ER. I had made a soup the day before that was better than anything I ever made before. I got him to eat about a cup of the soup for breakfast. Then I got him dressed and headed for the VA. (Of course it is a 2 hour drive.) One of the reasons I decided not to wait, he seemed to have more blood in his foley bag than urine. After 13 hours, there was only about 5 oz. in it. When we got to the ER it was his Primary Care doctor manning the ER. No wonder he wouldn't be there the next day. (Being ER Doctor is for 24 hours.) I told him, I expected him to send him up to a ward. I don't take him to the ER very often, but usually he is bad enough to keep him.

So after doing an x-ray and bloodwork they did indeed keep him. He had a raging infection (again) and he was dehydrated, but his stent that was put in last week had some blockage. (Ya think?!) On Friday they gave him a cat scan using the yucky white stuff he had to drink before hand. They could see there was definitely blockage. So they were going to arrange for him to go to St. Mary's, (the regional hospital) to do a test and possibly put a tube into the kidney and drains into a ball coming out of his back. So we waited, and waited. And in the meantime, no drink or food. Finally it was decided he would not go until the next day. So he had a chocolate pudding cup and some milk and went to bed. It was 8 pm by then.

Saturday, I walked into his room and he had a paper there on his tray that said npo (no drink or food). They were going to try for it again. Then they came in and said it looked like it was working now. So he got to eat and drink again.

That afternoon they used about ten bottles of sodium bicarbonate to clean out his bladder of infection and blood. They did this one at a time, putting it in through his catheter and then draining it out. They did it three times. Once more that night and then once Sunday morning. He finally started eating pretty good. He was feeling pretty good, too.

When I got there on Sunday he was pale again, and they had him on NPO. When the weekend doctor came in, he asked if I had any concerns. I said he looked terribly pale. He said they could do something about that, in fact they were going to give him a couple units of blood. They also took him off the NPO. So after lunch the nurse came in to fix him with a new IV. The one he had was too small to send blood through. She wasn't able to find a vein to run it through. She called in another nurse and he looked for about an hour. Going back and forth from one arm to the other. He actually found one but when he put the needle in, John jumped and he popped it. They then called in another nurse. She found one but his veins would contract when she tried it. Finally they called the ER nurse to come up and she got it on the first try.

I needed to get some of my school work done so I went back to the motel. It was about 3 pm. I got a call from the nurse at 4:15 that he wanted me to come back. Poor baby, he was tied down with the blood transfusion and couldn't reach for the water and wanted me to help him out while they were giving him the first unit of blood. It took about 3 hours. I had to spoon feed him. When that unit was done they then gave him a unit of heavy duty antibiotics. They gave him his sleeping pill and sarted the second unit of blood. I said I was going back to the motel and call me if I was needed at any time during the night.

Next morning when I got there, I found out he had had a reaction to the second unit of blood. He had gotten a raging temp and he had a hard time breathing and some other things. The same thing had happened at St. Mary's when they gave him two units of blood back to back in June. So we now know, not to give it to him so close together.

Monday, I came home. I will have to post what else happened later. I have to go back today, cuz they are going to try another procedure.

TTFN, Tess