On Holy Thursday, my dad had a fistula put in his left arm, as his kidneys have deteriorated to the point where dialysis is needed.
However, on Saturday and Sunday, he started having problems breathing. Mark and I took him and my mom to the hospital before we went to Mass.
He got dialysed via a port in his neck three times this week, and they got a lot of fluid out. He was supposed to get another treatment on Monday. However, overnight on Sunday, he started having excruciating abdominal pain.
Long story less long, they immediately did scans and determined that he had a perforated ulcer. My mom and I went right to the hospital to be with him before emergency surgery. The docs tried to prepare us for some of the most serious things that might have to be done, as they would not know until they went in what amount of surgery they would have to do.
The surgery was still pretty major, but fortunately, a lot of the things they MIGHT have had to do turned out not to be needed. What was needed was something called a GJ procedure. The perforation turned out to be a lot bigger than they were expecting to see, and so the hole that was in the area where the stomach joins the small intestine was not able to be repaired. Instead, they closed off that area of the stomach and joined the stomach to the small intestine in a different place entirely.
He was sedated all of Monday night into Tuesday. They did a dialysis right in the ICU room on Tuesday, after which they removed the breathing tube and the sedation. But he was still about 99% asleep yesterday when my mom and I visited (one at a time, per hospital rules).
Today, they did another in-room dialysis, then moved him from the ICU to a more regular room, albeit with telemetry, on the same floor. He was MUCH better tonight. He was alert and able to hold a conversation.
Things are still pretty serious, given his age and medical history. But everything that has been going on so far has been things that the doctors want to see.
We were thinking, prior to Monday's emergency, that he might come home from the hospital this week. That, clearly, is not going to happen. First of all, with the nasogastric tube, he is most likely on a "nothing by mouth" restriction for the next few days. I know when they had to remodel my digestive tract a few years ago, I had the NG tube for five days before they did a scan, to make sure everything was moving through the digestive tract and nothing was leaking anywhere. Only then did they take the NG tube out (the next morning, to my great aggravation... I had hoped it would come out the same day the scan determined that things were in working order with no leaks). I will be astonished if his timeline for determining that it's OK to take the tube out is any quicker than that. He's 82, so things don't just heal at warp speed.
In any event, we will greatly appreciate All The Prayers as we keep on keeping on while my dad recuperates. Thanks!
