A lot has gone on here. Most important at the moment is Janet is back in the hospital since early Sunday, Nov 4, with a major blood clot in her left leg and she had an infection, “Staphylococcus Aureus”. Fortunately, one of the milder kinds of that family. But, some good news is that they have cultured the blood and know accurately which antibiotics are best for her particular bug.
It also got into her “Central Line”, the long term IV line into her main vein to her heart. She just got back an hour ago from a very successful procedure to remove the infected line and install a new temporary Central Line that can be used for her IV nutrition (TPN) and for other meds and blood draws.
There is also good news about a Doctor, south of San Francisco, California that specializes in removing the kind of surgical adhesion’s that we think are causing her bowel obstruction. We have been sending his staff her medical records and he has phoned Janet’s Integrative Medicine Doctor and that went very well. Any surgery is over a week away. Watch this space for more news.
So, she is in good hands. We are both very tired as getting sleep is not easy when she was not feeling well at the Motel and now, in the Hospital, they pop in at all hours to draw blood, (Janet’s arms are getting quite battered from the many “sticks”), check her blood pressure, temperature, etc., clean the room, talk with one of the specialists, doors bang, alarms go off on the medical equipment and so on.
She is not up to any visitors and since she sleeps as much as she can work into the interruptions, phoning is not encouraged. Email is best, as someone said, email never wakes you up in the middle of the night. Actually, if Dave forgets to turn off the email program, it does, with a “Bing” when mail arrives. Therefore, if we need to have the computer running, I try hard to turn of the program. If I forget, it reminds me. “Bing!”
Our Extended Stay Motel is 0.6 miles by road from the Hospital and that is great, though I seldom sleep there.
We are tired, but encouraged. They are making good progress on her problems. But, we really regret that she missed a lot of calories since Sunday AM. The best available TPN is not as good as a diet of “real food” and her 1700 KCal/day TPN can only be given to a Central Line, which was out of commission for 5 days. They have a 700KCal PPN that can be given into her arm, but it was hard to find a good vein and the first one failed yesterday and they had to use a poor replacement in the other arm. Janet feels like a pin cushion, with bruises too.
But, we are working through this. More news when I have time. I need to go find out why the X-ray Dept has not read the X-ray approving her new Central line.
Dave & Janet
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