Hospital Saga--6
"Wonderfully boring" is one way of describing this stage of Mom's recovery in the hospital after open heart surgery. No immediate crises are present as far as we know, but things are not racing toward recovery either.
Her infection is a staph infection. It is responding to antibiotics, with the white blood cell count having fallen from 20,000 to 15,000. This response suggests that it is not MRSA, the kind that Bill says everyone is most scared of because of its resistance to antibiotics, but I have not heard a specific identification for the infective bacteria.
Mom is anemic, which affects her energy levels and her complexion. In some cases, anemia (low iron in the blood) is addressed with a blood transfusion, but that is apparently not appropriate in Mom's case because of how easily it could throw off the fluid balance in her system, making congestive heart failure a danger again. No internal bleeding is obvious, which is sometimes the cause of anemia, and with us is at least a niggling concern.
Her blood sugar is wildly erratic, ranging from 49 to 350, with just under 100 being a good number. At the extremes, they always address it promptly with either insulin or high-glucose inputs. Mom has monitored her blood sugar at home for the past number of years and kept it under good control with diet and exercise alone. But her diet is too nearly nonexistent, and her infection, lack of exercise, and probably many other factors make this a problem right now.
When anyone asks Mom if she has any pain, she usually says no, unless she is too tired at the moment of being in one position too long. I'm looking for her to come up with a "bottom line" joke one of these days to describe this phenomenon.
Her coming home from the hospital before (or during, or after) this weekend is a possibility, but everyone makes clear that they are making no promises. While some people in a similar situation are dismissed to a nursing home, we are all wanting her at home instead, with support from a Home Health service if necessary to make this arrangement acceptable.
Our neighbor, Virginia, recently had surgery almost identical to Mom's. I think she is just a bit younger than Mom, and stayed in the hospital only 5 days altogether. (Tomorrow it will be three weeks since Mom was admitted.) Virginia is recently widowed, so she presumably went home afterward to an empty house, although she has family and friends nearby who are careful about seeing that she is well taken care of. Her good recovery suggests that, compared to Mom, Virginia must have been in a far less compromised state of health before her surgery. I'm sure though that she has worked hard at recovery. Her daughter confesses to having schemed a bit to get her out of the house before she would have done so on her own initiative, but she now goes to Hutchinson regularly for rehab sessions.
On Tuesday, the 58-year old "comatose" patient (former Galichia employee) that had thanked Dad after he prayed for her is still surviving, and the doctors have now told her family that perhaps a little hope is warranted. On Tuesday, they had "no choice" but to remove her from one of the life support machines she was on. The doctors and the family were agreed on this, and the family told Dad before they did so that either her heart would stop beating or continue on its own at that point. It kept on. We're praying for her and her family.
In the extended family, the story on medical matters continues with good news and bad. My sister Carol's chest pain is thought now to have been an inflammation of the pericardium (the lining around her heart). While further testing is being done, that diagnosis was less worrisome than many of the alternatives that seemed possible. Her pain had diminished somewhat before she saw the doctor.
My niece, Kristi, who had chicken pox last week and the flu the week before that, now has moved on to something more troubling. Her pox are nearly all healed but she is not, and has a variety of symptoms worse than she had during her bout with the classical chicken pox symptoms. She saw the doctor yesterday, and will see her again today, after the doctor has consulted with an infectious disease specialist from Wichita. A scroll through the online information on complications of chicken pox was not particularly reassuring, but I've stuffed the data into the back of my mind while more capable minds are addressing the needs.
Kristi's brother Dietrich was diagnosed yesterday with strep throat--his particular brand of an encore to the flu he had earlier. Kristi and Dietrich's mother Lois is obviously less available to Mom because of this need for nursing care in her own household.
It's easy to focus unduly on the needs in our own small corner of life, but that is still the most logical place to begin in meeting needs--whether they are those of our family, our neighbors, or the people we meet away from home. Prayer is the universally appropriate response to these needs, and, while it is often not the only necessary response, it is the most assuredly effective one.
Thank you to all who have been praying. And tell us what your needs are, so that we can pray about them and participate with you as you have participated with us in seeking God's will and blessing.
Her infection is a staph infection. It is responding to antibiotics, with the white blood cell count having fallen from 20,000 to 15,000. This response suggests that it is not MRSA, the kind that Bill says everyone is most scared of because of its resistance to antibiotics, but I have not heard a specific identification for the infective bacteria.
Mom is anemic, which affects her energy levels and her complexion. In some cases, anemia (low iron in the blood) is addressed with a blood transfusion, but that is apparently not appropriate in Mom's case because of how easily it could throw off the fluid balance in her system, making congestive heart failure a danger again. No internal bleeding is obvious, which is sometimes the cause of anemia, and with us is at least a niggling concern.
Her blood sugar is wildly erratic, ranging from 49 to 350, with just under 100 being a good number. At the extremes, they always address it promptly with either insulin or high-glucose inputs. Mom has monitored her blood sugar at home for the past number of years and kept it under good control with diet and exercise alone. But her diet is too nearly nonexistent, and her infection, lack of exercise, and probably many other factors make this a problem right now.
When anyone asks Mom if she has any pain, she usually says no, unless she is too tired at the moment of being in one position too long. I'm looking for her to come up with a "bottom line" joke one of these days to describe this phenomenon.
Her coming home from the hospital before (or during, or after) this weekend is a possibility, but everyone makes clear that they are making no promises. While some people in a similar situation are dismissed to a nursing home, we are all wanting her at home instead, with support from a Home Health service if necessary to make this arrangement acceptable.
Our neighbor, Virginia, recently had surgery almost identical to Mom's. I think she is just a bit younger than Mom, and stayed in the hospital only 5 days altogether. (Tomorrow it will be three weeks since Mom was admitted.) Virginia is recently widowed, so she presumably went home afterward to an empty house, although she has family and friends nearby who are careful about seeing that she is well taken care of. Her good recovery suggests that, compared to Mom, Virginia must have been in a far less compromised state of health before her surgery. I'm sure though that she has worked hard at recovery. Her daughter confesses to having schemed a bit to get her out of the house before she would have done so on her own initiative, but she now goes to Hutchinson regularly for rehab sessions.
On Tuesday, the 58-year old "comatose" patient (former Galichia employee) that had thanked Dad after he prayed for her is still surviving, and the doctors have now told her family that perhaps a little hope is warranted. On Tuesday, they had "no choice" but to remove her from one of the life support machines she was on. The doctors and the family were agreed on this, and the family told Dad before they did so that either her heart would stop beating or continue on its own at that point. It kept on. We're praying for her and her family.
In the extended family, the story on medical matters continues with good news and bad. My sister Carol's chest pain is thought now to have been an inflammation of the pericardium (the lining around her heart). While further testing is being done, that diagnosis was less worrisome than many of the alternatives that seemed possible. Her pain had diminished somewhat before she saw the doctor.
My niece, Kristi, who had chicken pox last week and the flu the week before that, now has moved on to something more troubling. Her pox are nearly all healed but she is not, and has a variety of symptoms worse than she had during her bout with the classical chicken pox symptoms. She saw the doctor yesterday, and will see her again today, after the doctor has consulted with an infectious disease specialist from Wichita. A scroll through the online information on complications of chicken pox was not particularly reassuring, but I've stuffed the data into the back of my mind while more capable minds are addressing the needs.
Kristi's brother Dietrich was diagnosed yesterday with strep throat--his particular brand of an encore to the flu he had earlier. Kristi and Dietrich's mother Lois is obviously less available to Mom because of this need for nursing care in her own household.
It's easy to focus unduly on the needs in our own small corner of life, but that is still the most logical place to begin in meeting needs--whether they are those of our family, our neighbors, or the people we meet away from home. Prayer is the universally appropriate response to these needs, and, while it is often not the only necessary response, it is the most assuredly effective one.
Thank you to all who have been praying. And tell us what your needs are, so that we can pray about them and participate with you as you have participated with us in seeking God's will and blessing.
posted by Mrs. I at
11:17 AM
2 Comments:
Our concern and prayers from El Salvador. It is so good to be able to read and know how things are going for your mother. Thank you for that. Tell your parents for me that we are remembering them to the Healer.
By
Anonymous, at 12/05/2008
Sorry for sending that anonymously! The message for your parents is from Loncho and Pauline.
By
Anonymous, at 12/06/2008
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