Evening Day 14... Finally got to the hospital about 1pm but Mom's room was closed off with a scary 'STOP!' sign on her door declaring 'Patient undergoing medical procedure. Contact Nurse's station'. I found out they were inserting a PICC Line to use for her IV meds and nutrition from here on out, rather than poking her arm over and over... When the procedure was complete, Xray taken for position verification and I finally went in she was a bit perturbed. She said, "The technician inserting the PICC Line asked me if I was on steroids! When I said 'NO' she said 'Oh, because your veins are brittle." If anyone out there knows what is meant by 'Brittle Veins' please inform us because we're not understanding this.... Mom's never been on steroids... At least not since her body building days... just kidding!
Spent a quiet afternoon sitting with Mom and reading... Her favorite soap opera, 'General Hospital' comes on at 2pm so her invisible 'Do Not Disturb' sign goes up until 3pm ;-)... They checked her blood sugar level and it was elevated at 167 so they again gave her an injection of Insulin. She's back on the IV Nutritional Cocktail along with a diet of clear liquids consisting of Jello, apple juice and tea... The jello is sugar free and when I gave her the tea she asked me for the sugar packet to sweeten it... I said, "Mom! Your blood sugar is elevated, I don't think you're supposed to have sugar." She said, "Just a pinch won't hurt". That's when we realized the hospital staff had removed her stash of sugar packets! She gave SUCH a scowl... I think she's feeling better :-)
About 4:15pm when Jeanette arrived they still hadn't connected her IV to the PICC Line and just as we were wondering why, they came in and said it wasn't in correctly. They took her to radiology to re-insert the whole thing! Turns out the original one wasn't long enough, so they had to re-do the whole procedure. This time everything went well and they connected her up to the brand new PICC and removed her IV.
Before leaving, her Hospitalist Doc came in and gave us the following run down... Their hopes are that the infection will shrink down and contain near the area of the original tear. His concern is that her antibiotic is not available in oral form, only intravenously. He plans on discontinuing it on Sunday and see how she responds over the following two days. Another CT Scan will probably be done on Monday to see how much the infection has decreased... At that time, Doctors will meet and decide whether removing the drain is warranted or if they should send her home with it for follow up later. If they send her home with it, then there's a very real possibility that 3 to 4 weeks later as the infection is contained to the original tear site at the sigmoid, they will have to go in and surgically remove the 'bad' part of her colon and reattach the two 'healthy' end pieces.
Bottom line... Mom will remain in the hospital into next week. At this point we just take one day at a time... It's the best we can do. Mom seems to be getting a bit of her spunkiness back, which is a very good thing! Your continued thoughts and prayers are very much welcomed and appreciated....
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