Ups and downs

God what an emotional roller coaster this weekend has been.

Friday after staying awake longer than I would have liked to to see our carpet installed, I managed to collapse and get almost 6 hours of sleep. Then we all went up to see grandma in the hospital where we were assaulted by bad news.

Her fever was back. She was delirious, thinking that she was at home and needed to go to the hospital. It was scary. Not only that, but they'd moved her from the far end of the hall, to the room across the hall from the nurse's station and had a bed monitor on because she had this habit of getting out of bed with no one there to help her, and she was pretty darn weak, plus had a tangle of IV's to deal with. It was a scary sight. When we left, they were prepping her for another CT scan.

And the results weren't good. Her abscess was back, and bigger than before. And the nursing staff was having issues maintaining an IV site, so her alarm was going off all day on the IV pumps and her IV was leaking, so they decided that she needed a PICC line as well, so that they could stop blowing her veins with 2 different IVs.

So yesterday my dad and aunts spent all day waiting to see her doctor, who forgot about her after getting tied up in the emergency room and didn't remember until he was on his way home about her. So he called up at night.

At least yesterday she looked better. She was remembering a bit more and remembering some of what was going on. It seemed like our scare of possibly losing her was over. My mom and I had talked that morning and cried. It's so hard to face our mortality, but I realize that if the time comes, Grandma s ready. She's at peace and she misses Grandpa so much. It'll be hard when the time comes, but I don't think that it's going to be now.

It'll come soon enough if she doesn't start eating soon. We found out over the phone from Dr Ali last night that she's only eating half as much as she needs to survive. We asked the nurses if we could bring her up food since they were doing a calorie count, and they said yes, as long as we told them what we fed her.

So a plan strung into action. We were going to take her the chocolate ice cream that she loved so much from Mussell Beach, and we'd get her a large and tell her that it was a small. She also said to bring her chocolates if we wanted her to eat. So we went this morning after church and got her a bunch of candy: chocolate covered cashew clusters, chocolate covered caramels, and peanut butter kisses. Then we went over to Mandarin House and got 4 orders of takeout Chinese, Sweet and sour shrimp for her, and mom, dad and I got our favorites and took it all up to the hospital, hoping to entice grandma to eat. Unfortunately we got there after her lunch tray was delivered, but it had a piece of rubbery chicken on it, so she swapped out a crab rangoon for the chicken and munched on some of the shrimp. Aunt DeeDee took the leftovers home and heated them up for grandma to eat again later. She nibbled at the shrimp and the rice and ate the other rangoon for dinner and then ate her mashed potatoes and green beans off of her tray, so it was ok, if still not enough.

Until we convinced her to eat a "small" ice cream cone tonight. When we got up there tonight, her PICC line was in, and the plan for her is to get drained again tomorrow and have another drain put into the abscess while she completes 2 week of antibiotics and rehab over at Bay Special Care hospital at Bay Med's West Campus.

She's not out of the woods yet, but things are looking up.

Worry

A week later and my Grandma is still in the hospital. She was admitted through the Emergency Room last Tuesday because of a fever and abdominal pain. Turns out that she has diverticulitis that got all inflamed and the inflamed part exploded and formed an abscess. The abscess that she had (4cmx4cm) still has a drain in it, though it's a smaller than the previous drain. So from Tuesday until Saturday she was NPO, then graduated to ice chips and a banana bag. Saturday she graduated to soft foods and on Sunday we snuck her up some ice cream. That's when we found out that before they're letting her go home, they're going to do a calorie count to see if she's taking in enough nutrition before they take her off of the banana bag. We went up last night and there's a sheet on her door marking what was on each tray that she got during the day, and she barely ate anything off of her trays. We tried to get her to eat more, getting some ice cream from the nurse for her, and she pretty much refused to eat it, until my mom started talking to her and then feeding it to her.

And what's even more worrying is her lack of memory. She's so confused about where she even is. She doesn't know if she's at home or in the hospital. Doesn't know what day it is (but I guess after a week in the hospital that would happen). She wanted an extra blanket and told us that there was one in the linen closet. Sorry Grandma, no linen closet in your room. Then she thought that the blanket my mom got from the nurse was a tablecloth. Mom got her all tucked in and got her to eat some ice cream then Grandma tells us to put it in the freezer. We had to explain to her multiple times that there was no freezer or fridge for us to put them in so she needed to eat it now. A few minutes later she's asking the same questions. The entire time we're trying to tell her that she needs to actually eat if she wants to get out of the hospital.

It's worrying.

If she doesn't start eating more, she's not going to be around much longer.

For some reason I find this funny...

http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Four Hours

It seems that the last few days have been broken up into four hour increments because since I've gotten up on Tuesday, until today, I haven't slept for any longer than four hours at a time. After I got home on Tuesday morning, I slept and tried to get up after a short nap but my body wouldn't let me, even though I promised it that it could sleep through the night since I had the night off, but that it would have to wake up at 7am so that I could get to my MRI on time. Well, body didn't like that, so instead of getting up at 3:30 like I'd planned, I got up at 5.

Did the normal stuff that I do on a night off with no plans then, watched TV then a movie and wasted time on the internet. Exciting. Finally convinced myself around 1:30 that since I had to be awake and alert at 7am that I should probably go to bed. Good idea in theory. In practice however, I didn't fall asleep until 2ish and then woke up wide awake at 6am.

The MRI was just loads of fun, lemme tell you that. I get to Covenant and they show me where to go and then I have a regular MRI, where they strap these pads to my shoulder and strap them into place and stick giant headphones on me so that I can listen to some music and not focus on how freaking small of a tube that I'm in. Then they take me in for three different x-rays. Then off to another room for flouroscopic guided needle placement. Yes, it was as painful as it sounds. First they numb the area with novicaine and a normal sized needle. Then comes the nice big spinal needle so that they can get all the way down into the joint, while constantly taking x-rays that show up on the television monitor so that the radiologist can see if he's in the joint or not. And boy, the 1 second that he actually hit my bone, I just about hit the ceiling, luckily he didn't hesitate to give me more novicaine. So the needle finally gets down where it needs to be and he injects the contrast. It was really cool getting to watch the contrast start to show up on the x-rays that he was taking. Few more x-rays on that table and then off to the MRI again. Get strapped down to the table again and in I go. Then another MRI with my arm above my head. Loads of fun. Hour and a half since I got to Covenant and I get to go home.

Now they told me to expect some pain later in the day, so I was prepared for a small ache. On my way home I stopped to get some lunch meat for sandwiches because we were totally out and I had some flatbread multigrain wraps that I wanted to use. As I was coming out of Jack's I could barely use my right arm to lift the bags. But I got home and around 12:30 I laid down for a nap because I was tired and I had to work that night, but I didn't want to sleep right before work because I wanted to go out with my friends. Sure enough, I laid down, and 4 hours later I was awake.

And oh my god, I experienced a new level of pain. I moved my arm and sharp pains would shoot down my arm. But since I was sore before I took my nap, I took 800mg of Motrin. So that helped some. Friends and I went to BWW and the mall. I came home and took more Motrin. I was in pain. My mom finally made it home and I told her how much pain I was in. She was surprised and no one told me that the pain was going to be so sharp or intense so I was wondering if it was regular or not.

I made it through work, just barely and my coworkers all realized that I was in a ton of pain. Luckily it was a slow night and I was able to not move my arm too much. Got home from work and had to wait until 9am to call the doctor's office. Mom told me who to talk to so I talked to Heidi and she had some strings pulled to get the report faxed over stat and worked me in at 1:45 that afternoon. So I got about 2 whole hours of sleep then because I was worried about not getting up in time for my appointment.

Good news: I don't need surgery. I have no torn cartilage but I do have a ligament that's thinner then it should be. Luckily though it's not the ligament that holds everything in place. So for the next 6 weeks I need to focus on strengthening the rotator cuff and shoulder. I was also given some pain killers to help with the pain from the procedure.

I made it home and slept for another 4 hours, but it wasn't even solid sleep, it was that light sleep where you don't really sleep. It was annoying. But luckily I made it through the night last night with minimal pain and then came home this morning and slept for a glorious 8 hours. And I'm still tired. I'll be sleeping good tonight.

Fun at the doctor

This morning I had my annual "Let's get everything checked" appointment. All well and good. I get there, I wait, no biggie. The nurse takes me back, takes my vitals all is well. Leaves me to change into the gown.

Hitch.

The gown, which had been folded in the drawer by the great laundry staff at Covenant, only had one arm.

I'm standing there, trying to figure out how this thing goes on and try to get it on, and it's just not working.

Rush to get clothes back on.

Stick head out the door.

Here come nurse and doctor, rather surprised to still see me fully clothed.

I hold up the gown. "Only one sleeve."

Everyone kind of laughs and the nurse gets me out a new gown and then they leave me alone to change again.

That always confuses me though. Why do they always leave the room when you change? They're about to see all anyways.

Conversation with Mom

Me: "I don't like how it gets dark this early. It's dark when I go to work and it's dark when I come home from work."
Mom: "I know. We should move."
Me: "How about to Alaska?"
Mom: "Nah, Grandma wouldn't want to go there."
Me: "Ok how about Las Vegas then?"
Mom: "Yeah, that'd work."
Me: "And dad could get a job doing security in a casino."
Mom: "And yeah, then you could get a job as a tarty waitress."
Me: "Well, they need med techs in Vegas too."
Mom: "Or you could be a tarty waitress."
Me: "True, I could make more in tips than as a med tech."
Mom: "Exactly."
Me: "But, I dunno if the D's will cut it."
Mom: "Sure they will, you just need a good bra that'll push em up and together."