What Day Is It?

I wish I could come up with fancy titles for these entries.  We are beyond the point of counting days from surgery (I gave that up last week).  Sometimes titles come to me...other times they don't.  Hence, some posts are simply titled with the day/date.

As I write today's summary, I'm sitting with Ed in his hospital room. He's watching the Red Sox again (which is a good sign since he loves to watch them) and I'm on my laptop...pretty much what an evening at home might be like.  I would normally leave around now since Ed is settling in for the night  (really, "normally"...how sad that this is now a "norm").  However, Dan is on his way so he can be home for the weekend.  He's driving straight to the hospital so he can see Ed tonight.  Now there's certainly a bright spot in our day!

Speaking of which...  When I got here this morning, the PTs had gotten Ed up and he was sitting in the chair.  The first thing I noticed was that the swelling in his legs had gone down considerably!  Yeah!!  Yes, there is still some pretty good swelling, but certainly much better.  And Ed said he had taken several steps with the walker to get to the chair.  It was slow, but he did it.  So more progress there as well.  Dr. Marvelli also said the wound looked good and is beginning to heal so the wound vac was removed.  Our day certainly started out brightly.

However, brightness can only last so long.  At lunch time, Rob (our PA) came in and stopped Ed from eating anything.  There was still concern about the fluid that was continuing to accumulate in his abdomen and so they wanted to insert the PleurX drain.  This could be done with local anesthesia but he couldn't eat anything.

If you recall, two days ago I said that they couldn't insert the drain if there was an infection and they confirmed the fluid was infected.  That is still true--that is not ideal.  However, Ed basically needs to be drained daily otherwise his wound will not be able to heal.  With the regular draining and antibiotics the hope is that eventually the fluid that is drained will no longer be infected and once that happens and his wound is healed, the infected drain can then be removed.

Did you get all that?  Yes, it is confusing.  But it was consensus that we needed to get the fluid out and keep it out and this was the only option.  Solve the predominant problem first.  So at 4 PM we headed back down to Interventional Radiology in the basement at Cooley to see Dr. Gates.  I was able to wait down there (where there is no cell service, but good wifi) while Ed went in for the procedure.  They had told me it would be about 30 mins (10 mins of prep, 20 mins for the procedure) and 40 mins later they came out to tell me he was doing fine but they were still draining fluid.  At about 5:15, they finally were done.  Dr. Gates had guestimated before they started that they would probably drain about 2 liters of fluid (since they drained about 3 liters two days ago).  Well the magic number?  6 liters of fluid!

And, Dr. Gates could not insert the drain horizontally where she wanted so after about an hour, she wanted Ed to stand up and walk some (yes, I know...he's not walking) so that the tube would move lower in his abdomen.  After dinner, Ed was able to sit up--which was very difficult and he felt very light headed, but continued to push himself to at least stand (walking was definitely not going to happen).  After laying him back down in bed, they then drained an additional 1+ liter of fluid.

Now if you'll recall, a liter of fluid is about 2.2 pounds--so that was about 15 lbs of fluid!

While all of this was going on, our case manager was working hard to now find a bed for Ed where the wound vac was no longer needed but they now needed to handle the PleurX.  She was working with facilities in Amherst and Hadley (which are most convenient) as well as one in Northampton, Leeds, Greenfield, and West Brookfield.  If the Amherst and Hadley ones don't work out, next choice would be Northampton or Leeds.  What a job though--some don't have a bed for a male patient, some don't accept our insurance (hard to believe since it's good insurance), some don't support PleurX, etc., etc., etc.  Originally they thought he might be ready today, but with the procedure for the PleurX, that certainly was no longer feasible.  So it could be sometime over the weekend.  We'll see.  We're both excited about making this step in the right direction, but we're also nervous.  The doctors, nurses, and specialists here at Cooley have been great and Ed has gotten tremendous medical care.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.  We're hoping this drain helps keep him "dry" and that we can battle any infection that sticks to the drain.  We also hope the swelling continues to go down so he can work on walking and moving around more.

So please keep the prayers coming and have a good weekend.