Tag: ER

A Shitty Problem

No way to sugar coat this one, we’re back in the hospital again with another bowel obstruction. A really shitty problem that I feel like we just battled with. As of now, I’ve been up since about 3AM when my husband started stirring enough in bed that I took notice. Around 3:15, he got up and exited the bedroom. 15 or so minutes later, he came back in and attempted to lay down again. I could feel him wiggling and moving his knees and as he was laying there, I could tell that he was uncomfortable. Then he got up, moved to the floor and assumed the child’s pose position. I knew immediately what this meant.

Another bowel obstruction.

So, we gather a bag and I appoint my oldest teenager in charge of the 5 year old should he wake up and notice we are not there. I tell her that we’re headed to the hospital and I’ll be back before she leaves for school. So off we go directly to Barnes downtown (a 40 min drive away from our house) knowing that if we go anywhere else, we’d be transferred there anyway and then we’d have another $800 ambulance bill to contend with. (rolls eyes) So we arrive around 4AM and we get checked into the ER. Once they decide to admit my husband, they roll him off for a CT scan, and I decide to head back home hoping I can get back with enough time to catch a quick nap before I do preschool drop off for the 5 year old. However, when I get home, my mind won’t shut off, and my attempt to sleep for a bit is undermined by my anxious brain. So I get up, drop monster off at preschool, make sure my babysitter is avail to pick him up, and rush back to the hospital.

Now, almost 9:30AM, I weave my way from the parking garage up to my husbands room on floor 6. Back together with our old friend, the GI floor, lol Clearly it had been too long since we’d seen the whole staff! The only bright spot here is that we’ll be back under the care of Dr. Glasgow. Our favorite surgeon! So now, here we sit, my husband with this nasty NG tube up his nose and the pump running to suck all the contents out … only nothing is coming out. I realize that every obstruction is different, but last time there were buckets of gunk coming out of my husbands stomach almost immediately after inserting the NG tube. This was gross, yes, but it also alleviated the pressure and the pain he was experiencing. But this time? We’ve been here now for almost 12 hours and he’s still in pain with lots of pressure and NOTHING is coming out of the NG tube!? So I’m not sure what that means.

Fast forward 24 hours later — WOW. Things moved fast yesterday. After hours and hours of my husband being in pain and being uncomfortable, we finally saw our friend Dr. Glasgow around 5pm. He said that the results of the CT scan clearly showed a closed loop bowel obstruction and this was very different than the bowel obstruction he had last time. He said this type of obstruction rarely cleared on its own and suggested surgery ASAP to resolve this. He was worried that if they waited any longer the blood flow to that part of the bowel would be so restricted that the bowel might die and he’d have to remove that portion. Not something we wanted. The thought of putting my husband through yet ANOTHER surgery was literally unbearable, but we really had no choice. We could have waited to see if it cleared on its own, but 1. Andy would have had to suffer through another night in pain and 2. we could have risked further damage to the bowel. So we agreed to proceed and my husband was immediately prepped for surgery. Since Dr. Glasgow is intimately familiar with my husbands history and innerds, he said that while he had him open he would also look around for any signs that the cancer had returned. Honestly, this was the ONE bright spot in this whole awful ordeal! I mean, our cancer surgeon, opening my husband back up to physically look inside with his own eye balls??! This is EXACTLY what I wanted! I don’t trust a CT scan as far as I can throw one. They don’t work for this type of cancer, so I was elated, overjoyed even, that he offered to take a look around while he was “under the hood” anyway!

The surgery only lasted about 45mins, but they went in through the same incision they used last time … and they cut him just as wide open too. Ughhhh My poor husband. The good news, tho, was that everything went just as planned, no surprises! Which I was so happy to hear. Dr. Glasgow said there were 2 prominent “bands” of scar tissue strangling the bowel and another band that was almost as close. He removed them and even went through and removed scar tissue from other areas on the intestines that looked like it could potentially turn into a bowel obstruction of some sort. Then, (my favorite part) he took a look around for any signs that the cancer had returned … and it HADN’T! He didn’t see any signs of recurrence! Hallelujah! He said that he resected a larger portion of scar tissue and sent that to pathology, just to be sure, but he did not expect that to come back positive for cancer. I can’t even begin to describe how relieved I felt when he told me this! I mean, here we were, not even 6 months out from my husbands big HIPEC surgery and he was still clear from the big clean out! Breathe. Such a wave of relief! This is the thing I’ve been most worried about; Tracking this cancer. It seems that CT scans and blood work are extremely unreliable to detect growth, but a surgeons eyes? That is the detection mechanism that will never fail, will never be unreliable and will always provide me with the fullest, most complete picture and the most comfort as we move forward. Now, I realize I can’t really expect this to happen every 6 months, or even every year, but I’ll take it when I can get it, and this is pure joy for me! A nearly 100% confirmation that the cancer had not returned!
…pending the pathology from the scar tissue sample.

So now its a bit of a waiting game. Since he had this surgery, chemo will have to go on hold for 4-6 weeks. I wonder if I can talk my husband into taking the rest of this year off from chemo and having the holidays, then finishing off the remaining 6 rounds in January? I mean, haven’t we been through enough this year??! For reelz. Who knows? lol For now, its back to healing, and hanging out around the house, and more episodes of The Office. (rolls eyes) Which I’ll gladly take any day over seeing my husband in that kind of pain!

Appendicitis

At urgent care, they gave my husband a CT scan (which, again, I was initially pissy about because of the cost) and immediately identified the problem. Appendicitis. They recommended he go straight to the ER to have his appendix looked at more closely.

Meanwhile, I had the P1 team at my house. We were having a great workshop! We got a lot accomplished and while we were breaking for lunch, my husband came home. He told me the news and that he was heading to the ER. Still peeved, but now a bit concerned that he might actually have something wrong with him, I ask him if he needed me to drive him or if he needed anything from me? He says no, that he is totally fine to drive himself and who knows what the ER will recommend or how long it will take. So I let him go and me and the P1 team went back to working on the project.

My mind was racing tho. Here I was, hosting this group, literally in my home, and my husband was heading to the hospital! What was the right move here? Do I send the P1 team away? If so, where were they to go? Do I go with my husband and sit in the ER just to wait for God only knows how long? I didn’t know what to do. So I went with status quo. I remained with the P1 group. But by 3pm, my husband had been seen in the ER and they told him that he needed surgery to have his appendix removed ASAP. His surgery was scheduled for 5:30pm. I could no longer focus on the P1 project, and my team could tell. They had asked me no less that 30 times if I wanted to go be with my husband at the hospital, each time I declined. But by 4pm, it was clear I could no longer stay at home. I apologized and sent the P1 team out the door. (Note, they were SO understanding and completely okay with leaving! It was really more my stubbornness that was keeping everyone at the house, not my P1 team.)

So onto to the hospital I go. I get there, find my husbands room, and see him just long enough for him to detect the aggravation on my face and in my body language. I was aggravated. Here I was, trying to be a female in the tech industry and waiting YEARS for this opportunity, and THIS! This had to happen now. Right. Fucking. Now. Aggravated was an understatement.

He went into surgery around 7pm, not 20 mins after I got there, and around 8pm the dr came out and talked to me. He said that he had successfully removed the appendix, but it had perforated prior to removal. I remember him saying that his appendix was the gnarliest looking appendix he may have ever seen, and thinking Whoa, really? I mean, this was an older dr who had clearly been around the block with an appendix or two, and MY husbands was the gnarliest he’d ever seen? Huh.

The surgery was laparoscopic. So all that was left of the whole ordeal was 3 itty bitty scars on my husbands belly. He came out of surgery and ended up spending the night in the hospital because they wanted to administer IV antibiotics. The next morning I went back to the hospital and was (again) peeved to learn that they wanted to keep him ANOTHER night, possibly 2!? I couldn’t imagine how much this was costing us and since I’m the one in charge of finances in the house, all I could think about was how much shuffling around of money I was going to have to do to cover this ridiculous ordeal … and now they wanted to keep him another 24 maybe 48 hours??? Aw HELL NO.

It’s so ridiculous looking back and thinking about how I was so pissed off at all of this. I was pissed at my husband (who clearly was not at fault here, but I kept thinking that if only he had eaten less McDonald’s or something, this would not have happened.) I was pissed that the nurses (who, again, not their fault, but kept coming in and telling me that they needed to keep him there because of the perforation in the appendix, which put him at a higher risk of infection.) I was pissed at the dr who operated (who, I rationalized, clearly didn’t do a good job of cleaning it all up or else they wouldn’t be so worried about infection.) I was SO pissed that we decided to go with the stupid high deductible insurance plan thru work to save money because we rarely got sick or need to see a doctor. I was trying to place blame, I NEEDED someone to blame.

There was no one to blame.

He was sent home on Sunday, March 31st. By this time I had resolved myself to paying the entire max exposure for our insurance (ughh) and was sort of, in jest, but kind of serious, planning all the other surgeries he could have now that we were already in this deep! He needed sinus surgery and to get snippy-snipped, if you know what I mean, he had a situation with his lower back that needed attention and … what else could I pile on here since we’re already paying anyway! It was a fun game.

The work week started and my husband’s driving was restricted, so he decided to work from home that week. It’s important to restate that I also work from home, so having him at the house was a complete distraction. He decided to setup shop in the basement, he had his laptop, his PlayStation, and all the streaming TV services at his disposal. And he used them all. so. much. of. The Office. Recall that I have a bit of a problem with empathy. He had surgery to remove his appendix and had 3 tiny little holes from the laparoscopy that were healing. I had birthed 3 babies via c-section. I win that pain fight. I could not stand to have him hobbling around the house hunched over, taking Norco pain meds 4-5-6 days after the surgery. Are you kidding me? I switched over to over-the-counter Advil the second I came home from the hospital WITH a newborn. Get over yourself, dude, man up. You are NOT in that much pain. In my mind, I constantly compared my c-section with his surgery. I would think to myself that mine was WAY worse in terms of what they did, the incision, the recovery, basically everything, and I had done that 3 times! I thought he was being so ridiculous.

Yes, I’m an asshole.