Cody Updates by Mom

Update on how things are going:

Well, I have been home now for two days and am feeling much better.  I am not 100%, I wouldn’t even put me at 75% but am really quite improved even from just yesterday.  I have stayed home from work to recoup and try to see how I can manage a full day of activity without my bed.  The biggest struggle has been my sleep schedule.  I have been up since about 4 a.m. and am starting to feel it hit me a bit but I want to make sure I can sleep tonight.  My plan is to go back to work tomorrow but to take it easy and just get through things at my desk.  I may have to call “dib’s” on the quiet room a couple times if I cannot get the sleep thing figured out tonight.  I still get tired at the top of the stairs but work has elevators so I should be good there.  🙂

From the day prior to going into the hospital to coming home I have dropped 8.5 pounds.  It is amazing how quick it goes when you are on IV fluids for almost five days straight.  I have been working to get back on a schedule of eating a drinking so I can try to get a few of those lost pounds back.  This has been more difficult as I still have a fair amount of pain while I am eating.  Imagine a rug burn at the end of your esophagus where all the food is going to pass by.  Really cold things are bugging it, hot stuff is bugging it, well, who am I kidding, everything is bugging it.  It isn’t a horrible pain but it is definitely affecting my desire to eat or drink much.  They have given me a med to help coat the esophagus to help with the pain.  It is the same stuff they use with people that have ulcers.  I am working through getting that into my food/drink schedule as I cannot take with any food or drink.  Other than the pain with eating I have not had any issues with eating.  There is some hope that since the stent was in for four days that we could count it as an “uber dilation” and it may have fixed the problem.  I have an appointment with Dr. Kendrick next week to determine next steps if we need them.

I have been trying to figure out the visual words to explain how I felt after this ordeal.  “Hit by a truck” just wasn’t quite enough.  Hit, run over, back over and then run over again may be close but I think I got it.  Yesterday I felt about as bad as I did on the bad days after chemo.  This time I got my butt kicked.

Now – Detail

To keep with my process of using this site as my therapeutic psychologist with my writing I would like to go through my latest adventure in details that I can remember.  Sorry, its gonna be a long one.  For those of you not interested in the detail and possible gross things, feel free to stop reading now.  Don’t worry, you won’t offend me.

First of all, I would like to again thank Jim for updating everyone while I was in the hospital.  I am so grateful that he is always there for me and wiling to take on things as we are hit with them.  I am also very impressed with the “Short Stint (stent)” title and writing.  Clever.  🙂

Last week, I was starting to feel the esophagus closing up a bit and knew I had to call Michelle.  She chatted with Dr. Kendrick and he chose a specific GI doc (Dr. A, not going to try to spell it) to put the stent in and got me on his very busy schedule for Friday.  This meant that I needed to fast again starting on Thursday night and early morning as we had a lovely 7:30 arrival time on Friday.  Due to the fact that we were a “fit in” we spent a fair amount of time in our room waiting for when they could get me back for the stent placement.  Late morning we finally had things moving and I was headed to my procedure.  I had no thoughts that this would be any different than the others.  So much for thinking.  Immediately upon waking up I knew that something was wrong.  I felt more nauseated than I have, EVER, and I was in serious pain.  I was throwing up blood and phlegm regularly.  Dr. A and his team continually checked on me.  I tried for quite a while to ignore the nausea and see if I could get past it.  I got dressed, they removed the IV and I even went to the restroom on my own.  I was only able to fake it for a very small amount of time.  After some meds and more throwing up (in tears begging that they would just let me go home) they determined that I should be admitted to St. Mary’s for the night.  There was concern of dehydration and they felt that if I could just get past a day or so that my body would accept the stent in it and all would be well with the world.

I took an ambulance ride to the hospital and I was admitted.  Honestly today the days all blur together but I can tell you that they didn’t when I was there.  Trust me, I was blurry but time moved at an incredibly slow pace.  My life had turned into a world of explaining the situation to new doctors, nurses and help, throwing up and writhing in pain.  I asked Sheila yesterday why this kicked my butt so much.  She said that retching is one of the hardest things for our bodies to go through and recuperate from.  It is an “all body” process that uses all of the muscles to force the foreign item out of our body.  It is one of those necessary evils that helps protect us by forcibly removing what is trying to hurt us.  My stent was sewed to my esophagus so it wasn’t going anywhere.  Unfortunately we had a shared room so Jim ended up getting a hotel for the night so he could be close.  Friday night was a long night of many meds, throwing up, only small amounts of medicated sleep and really willing to do anything to make it stop.  My only pleasant thoughts were that my roommate wasn’t very conscientious with how many people she had visiting and how very loud they were during the evening hours.  Sorry, I was a little happy that my retching could make her miserable throughout the night.  Happily, she went home the next day.  This was good since Jim was going to go to the nurses and asked for me to be moved.  My other roommates were not as inconsiderate so I really did feel bad that I was so sick and tried to throw up more quietly.  I started spitting instead of swallowing my saliva as that seemed to help decrease the instances of retching.  I was still in a lot of pain.

Saturday was spent the same other than my Esophagram study that they did.  They had me drink a contrast then they had to take pictures.  I am amazed at the people that chose to be in this field.  I would swallow, hold my breath, take the picture, then the tech would bring my bucket, I’d throw up and we would do it again.  They never once made me feel unimportant, gross or anything remotely negative.  They truly felt sorry that they couldn’t fix anything for me.  They were able to see the contrast and the stent and it hadn’t moved.  This is good because it meant that the stitching was holding even with my state.  They let me see the pictures of it in between my bouts.  They did see some contrast going around the outside but were not concerned.  This is important to me as Jim noted they put a straw in me, the spot where they put it wasn’t a flat straw shaped place that it fit perfectly into.  I now knew why the pain was getting worse.  The stent was moving so much with my retching that it was rubbing areas in my esophagus raw.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday were much of the same.  I will comment that the blue bowls that they give you down there are now never going to be anywhere near me in the future.  I had two so they could rinse one without leaving me without a bowl for any length of time.

Sunday proved to be one of the worse days and evenings.  They were worried that with the anesthesia on Friday and all the meds that I was getting constipated and we were going to have another problem on our hands.  I made it part of the evening on Sunday without the pain meds and they tried a numbing med for me to swallow.  Threw that up too.  After what seemed like a million hours I finally convinced them that I was not going to make it through the night without pain meds.  Luckily they put me back on the meds so I could get at least small glimpses of sleep.  I at least had the knowledge that they had already decided to take the stent out on Monday.  I just had to make it one more night.

Monday I was prepped and ready to get the stent out.  I was in the room and the anesthesia guy was letting me know that he was going to give me an different IV  nausea med that they use and then put me to sleep.  I had been nauseated for so long that my entire body went still when it kicked in and the nausea was gone.  As I drifted to sleep I silently thanked him for finally helping me.

I was a new person!  The stent was out and I could tell the minute I woke up from the procedure.  Everyone that saw me commented that I looked like a completely different person now that it was out.  I saw a lot of people there too.  When you are hitting your call light a on average a couple times an hour you get to meet most of the nurses in the unit.  Jim could tell immediately too.  Monday night I was able to drink without throwing up!  Yay!  I had water and juice.  They started the Miralax right away that night as they were concerned about that issue.  I had an unexpected visitor on Monday.  Dr. Kendrick came in with his group of doctors.  He walked into the room and said, yay, I found you!  He apologize profusely about the entire situation.  At no time did I ever blame anyone for any of this.  It was just not going to happen.  He told me that he was going to make sure that I do not fall through the cracks of the system and that he would see me next week.  Again, I am in awe of his care toward his patients.

I still had to prove I could eat though.  Tuesday I was able to keep a small breakfast down and I finally got my dismissal papers to get out of there.

On the way out we had the fortune of being able to see a coworker that had just had surgery.  It was so great to see him up and what a very nice way to end my stint with the stent.

Caring Bridge Comments

Lorelie|Apr 24, 2015 4:43pm
Wow! What an ordeal!! So glad you’re better. I’d be glad to give you the pounds you’ve lost!