Wednesday-Friday Update

Wednesday-Friday, August 6-8, 2008

 

On Wednesday, Judy needed to be in Lafayette, and Carl spent the day with friends in North Manchester. On Thursday, Carl was able to visit the hospital with Dorotha and Joe Fry Mason. The reports are that the therapy went very well both days.

 

Today (Friday) was the day for putting in a stomach tube to assist Doreen’s eating. Although we expected the procedure to be done at 10:30 a.m., we were told on Tuesday that the time was changed to 8:30. So we left North Manchester at 6:30 to get to the hospital by 7:30 to accompany Doreen. When we arrived, we found out that there were glitches in the plan, because Doreen apparently pulled out her PCC line overnight (although she was sure a nurse had done it—there was no record of that). Because the line was out, she did not get her IV nutrition most of the night. Because the IV nutrition is basically sugar water, it raises her blood-sugar level, which means she needs insulin. Because she did not get the IV nutrition beginning at 1:30 or so, she had gotten insulin she didn’t need, and her blood-sugar level was now too low. This is one of the benefits of the stomach tube—she should be able to get back to normal blood-sugar regulation!

 

After the hospital gave Doreen an injection of dextrose, we headed to another hospital (Parkview) to get the procedure done. When we got there, we ended up waiting a long time, until the doctor came to do the procedure at the time we were originally were told—10:30. But before they did the procedure, they found out the blood-sugar level was very low again, so they needed to give more dextrose. The procedure went very well, but it took a long time for Doreen to wake up. When she finally started to come back to the present, her blood-sugar had dropped again. But an advantage of that was that she did something she hadn’t done for weeks—talk about food! She talked about oatmeal and hash browns. (The hospital ordered oatmeal for her supper. We will ask tomorrow if she actually ate it.)

 

After talking with different doctors and trying other things, more dextrose was given, and Doreen really started to wake up, so after 6 ½ hours we got back to Progressive, even thought we expected the procedure and transport to take 45 minutes. Now we will see if the procedure will help with eating. She will still be able to take food by mouth, but they will provide a steady input of nutrition through the tube. If she takes enough by mouth, they can stop using the tube.

 

Carl and Judy will be able to visit daily for a few days now and will send updates as we see the progress.