Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Well......
If I am asked about what I do these days I will have to say that I spend a lot of my time sitting in tiny little curtained cubicles in the hospital!!
Took John to the surgeon at 10am this morning for him to look at the blocked feeding tube. He said he could not deal with it at the office as he would have to change the tube so to meet him at ambulatory care at the hospital.
Once there - and through all the admitting procedures etc - we were taken to an examining room. The surgeon cut off the existing tube and began to probe and prod the area the tube goes in. This was very painful for John so finally the surgeon said he would have to freeze the area. Once frozen he poked and twisted and then got out a scalpel and really went to work. Finally he said that he could not fix it there and that John would have to be taken to day surgery for him to scope and then redo the initial operation. He bandaged up the now bleeding wound and sent us off.
Waited from 2:30 - 6:30 in day surgery - after more paper work and more admitting procedures. Finally he was taken to the operating room. The surgeon reported afterwards that the tube had somehow become dislodged from the stomach and that they had to "carve" (his words) it out of the intestinal wall and put a new tube into the stomach. Apparently this is a very rare occurance. He said John was a "special" case - well, we know that!
Got home, with John, at 10pm. He is in much more pain than from the original surgery - even with morphine at the hospital and T3's when we got home. Hopefully he will sleep through the night. We can start to use the new feeding tube tomorrow - PTL!
Pehaps a one thumb down day with a one thumb up result???