Getting better

Melissa had a couple of bad days last week but the weekend was good. She just gets tired if she does too much. She went to see the interventioal radiologist today. He pulled one drain and put a smaller tube in the other one. He says everything is looking good. I'm sure being on IV antibiotics doesn't hurt.

He did tell Melissa that he had talked with the surgeon and he(surgeon) wants to stitch up the distal side of her stoma. Melissa will get official word of this on Wednesday when she see the surgeon. No idea at this time when it might happen.

Melissa has her appitite back and seems to eat almost constantly. She has put back on a couple of pounds.

Coming Home

Melissa is coming home today. She will come home on IV antibiotics but will be able to do them herself since she has a hohn line in her neck shoulder area.

The report came back on the sore by the stoma, it is just a sore that can't heal because the scab keeps getting torn off when she changes her bag. She had biopsies done yesterday which made for a long day. She was taken down at 9:30 and didn't get back into the room until almost 3:00. She was also given 2 units of blood last night. That didn't finish until 2:00 am this morning. Hopefully she will not have any problems while she is home.

Melissa move to a regular room on Sunday night/Monday morning. She started having some problems with nausea along with the pain. They seem to finally be able to keep both under control.

She has several teams of doctors coming in to see her: General team, surgical team, GI team, Intervention radiologist, Invectious Disease team and now a dermatology team. She at times is one popular lady. She was NPO today and finally got to eat and drink after 4 pm even though they did no test. They did do a biopsy of a sore she has right by her stoma. Initial results should be back tomorrow. IV antibiotics are suppose to change to a once a day thing and the ID people are fine with her going home with that. Right now the doctors are collecting lots of info so on Monday when the colon-rectal people get together to discuss their difficult patients, Melissa will be one of those discussed.

She thanks you for your prayers.

After 22 hours in the ER they finally got me up to the admit holding area until they can get me in a real room. I am still having a lot of pain and I spiked a temp of 103 last night and no one really knows why. There really isn't much of a plan yet but things are starting to get rolling. I have 4 or 5 teams of doctors on my case now so it is a constant stream as one rounds by themselves then come back later with the rest of the team. Currently I am on two IV antibiotics as well as some fluids. Tomorrow I am getting a Hohn line put in (basically a PICC but in the chest). My new surgeon is also suppose to be sitting down with my interventional radiologist to look at all the scans and pictures they have taken since the beginning. They are thinking I am probably going to have to have surgery but not till next week. Dr. Safar (the surgeon) is adding me to they Monday morning meeting where all the colon rectal people get together and discuss their complicated cases so he doesn't want to do anything till after that in case someone has a better idea. He said until then they will do a bunch of studies/test so I'm ready to go when they do decide what to do. Since they are putting in the hohn I can go home when everything is stabilized so probably in a couple of days.

As I write this Melissa is on her way to the ER. Friday she went to see the same doctor that she had seen last. They found a new abscess (it is not related to the other one that they know of)and inserted a drain. They said the other one is shrinking. She was in some pain, although manageable, after it was done but came home. Tonight after supper, she started running a fever of 100.4 and was in severe pain. Drew called the doctor on call and he even knew her case. He thinks that they might admit her and start her on antibiotics.

Troubles again

Melissa is having problems with the plug. Last week she had an x-ray done and her abscess is active again. They think that the plug may have been put in only to the abscess thinking that was the bowel. The interventional radiologist told her that her x-ray was one of the hardest to understand he had seen. She is going back to have a CT scan with contrast done on Friday. He is also talking to the surgeon to try to figure out what should be done next. She will have a period of time she feels well and then will start feeling bad. That is when the abscess is filling up and starting to cause problems. Then it will drain and she will feel better. They have put a drain in the abscess so that is helping some, I think.

The Plug is in

I went to STL on Wednesday and had the plug put in. They used so much sedation that I didn't feel anything and I didn't hurt much after either. I have also been having problems with a blister like thing next to my stoma. I've had it before but it was cased by stitches that didn't disolve like they should. On the way to stl I called my doc's nurse and left a message for them then called again and left a message with the person that answers the main line. Drew then called again while I was getting the plug placed and got to talk to her and she knew nothing about any of the other calls. She did get me in to see another surgain if we could get there by 3:30. They way it worked out was they woke me up fast, got me in a chair, handed me some juice and pushed me out the door to make the other doc before he left for the day. Lets just say I liked him so much I think I may have a new surgan. He thought it looked like something, called a GI doc from across the hall in and she looked at it and they agreed on what it is. They want me to take oral steroids for it but they are worried it will interfer with the healing of the plug so they gave me a cream for now.

Now I am hurting a lot but nothing a pain pill can't solve. The biggest problem is I am still having some drainage but there is a plastic disk that sits on my skin and the drainage is under it so I can't clean it and it is causing irritation. He said I can expect some drainage for awhile but as it heals it should decrease. This is only the second one that he has ever done so it is hard to say exactly how long it will take but we are hopeful that it will work.