Brzycki family: Emergency Surgery

What a few days it has been! Ed had emergency surgery Tuesday nite/Wed morning. Below is a recap of the past few days. I'll try to provide daily updates moving forward.

Tuesday, 3/26
Ed was home again today. He continued to be fatigued and trying to find the right combination to regulate his bowel movements and deal with the diarrhea he was experiencing. I got home late from work after stopping at the grocery store to pickup some high fiber foods for Ed. I had leftovers and he had some soup and crackers. Around 9 PM we finally sat down in front of the TV. Ed used the bathroom and then came out and sat on the couch in tremendous pain. The pain was in the middle of his abdomen and it was so intense it was causing tears. I called 911 and the EMTs checked him out, got him into the ambulance, gave him some pain killers and we were on our way to Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

They put him on an IV which caused him to be "cold" and tremble terribly. That finally stopped and they brought him into x-ray since they were sure he had some type of blockage. His vitals showed very low blood pressure (and Ed usually has high blood pressure due to this chemotherapy) and they pumped him full of a lot of fluids quickly (putting compression sleeves on the IV bags). They had decided they were going to insert a tube down his nose and throat into his abdomen to drain liquid from the top of the stomach. However, his vitals weren't getting better and they determined they wanted to do a CT scan to get a better look. Once they did this, they were convinced he had a perforated bowel. It was now about 3:00 AM.

A surgeon, Dr. Christopher Marvelli, came in to talk to us about this and the risks but that we really didn't have any choice. They needed to operate and quickly. And he was direct in the risks involved. He hopefully would find the hole and if he did would need to do a colostomy. If he coudn't find the hole or if things looked too bad, all he could do was close Ed up. Dr. Marvelli called Ed's oncologist Dr. Bowers. Dr. Bowers talked to Ed and then later called back to talk to me. Both doctors asked if I had someone I could call to be with me. Dr. Bowers told me "it didn't look good" and I should have someone with me and should call Dan as well. I needed to prepare for the worse. Both Ed and I trying to prepare but we clearly weren't prepared for this. Are you ever?

At 4:15 AM on Wednesday, 3/27, they took Ed into surgery and I was alone in the Kittredge Surgery Center at Cooley. Seriously, there was no one else there! Anyhow, Dr. Marvelli told me it could take about 2 hrs, but again, depended on what he found. Ed told me to be sure to call my sister Cathy to be with me. I promised him I would once he was in surgery. And I did. At 4:15 AM I called her to tell her that Ed had gone into surgery and "it didn't look good". I then called Dan and told him he needed to come home. I hesitated to contact my mother after what she's been through these past couple weeks with the lose of my brother. In fact, I hated "bothering" both my sister and Dan as well, but they all made it clear I needed to call them. I called my mother at 6:00 AM to let her know and she came over as well.

Dan arrived just around 7:00 AM and shortly after (around 7:15 AM), Dr. Marvelli came out to tell us that the surgery went well. There was a perforated bowel, clear liquid/air in the abdomen and he was able to do a colostomy. The anethesiologist (Dr. Lawlor), who we met at 4 AM, came out and explained how things went and that Ed had a breathing tube and that we could go up to the critical care unit in a little bit to see him.

We were so thankful.... A few hours earlier, we didn't know if Ed would make it out of surgery. Or, if he did, whether they were able to find and repair the perforation. We were so lucky.

Wednesday, March 27

Around 8 AM we went up to the critical care unit to see Ed. His doctor is Dr. Rick Levrault--a young, tall and handsome doctor (as described by Dr. Bowers). Dr. Bowers was there when I arrived--what a relief to see a friendly face--it meant sooo much to me. Dr. Levrault was terrific too though.

Ed was pretty much out of it and their first goal was to monitor him and maybe remove the breathing tube in the next day or two. I made phone calls to our priest Fr. Vern (who I did try to reach before Ed went into surgery), my sisters, folks at work, and a couple other of Ed's friends.

Ed's nurse was Christina and she was a gem! She was young and sweet and very attentive and caring (and cute/pretty...but that had nothing to do with her nursing abilities!). She was not working in the critical care unit again until Saturday which bummed Ed out.

After a couple hours, Ed was awake and with the breathing tube in, he could not talk, so he resorted to writing first on the palm of my hand and then we gave him a pen and he made notes on a piece of paper. Now mind you, it was not like he was sitting up writing a letter. Rather, he was laying back in the bed, head back, and using his one hand down on the bed to write out short words. He was quite ambitious and even used his energy to poke fun at all of us and to try to fix up Dan with his nurse Christina.

Fr. Vern came by to visit and gave Ed the Anointing of the Sick. That meant a lot. Dr. Marvelli and Dr. Lawlor both stopped by as well to check in on Ed. By early afternoon, Ed was breathing on his own and they could remove the breathing tube! Yeah, victory #1!

Dan and I headed home around 8 PM. I was exhausted (no sleep at all the night before) and Dan was tired since I woke him up at 4 AM and he had to drive 2hrs to get to the hospital. But we were happy the breathing tube was out!