(no subject)
I'm still here but I'm not so certain many others are. Has everyone been usurped by the lure of the 140 character post and/or Facebook?
Is there anybody out there?
My absence can be explained thusly: In May, Mom was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure on top of her Type I Diabetes and Renal Failure. Her health was failing quickly and her heart surgeon wanted to perform a catheterization to see how severe the damage was and perform any angioplasty/place stints as necessary. I went home for a brief vacation to see the family at the beginning of June. Once I was off the plane, I was told about the upcoming procedure and how traumatizing it would be on her body. It is a simple procedure, but the doctors have to use a dye in order to see where the cath is going. Mom is allergic to this dye but there are no other options. They knew in advance that the dye would wreck havoc on her already-failing kidneys and talked to my family about the high chance of her going on dialysis. It needed to happen ASAP and since I was already there, I tried to take some FMLA time off to stay and be there for her. My plane was supposed to leave on a Sunday but the surgery was scheduled for a week from the following Monday so I originally tried to stay through the week.
I failed.
I was an emotional mess and pretty sure I had what could be described as a mild nervous breakdown that Monday. I might find family frustrating and occasionally in direct conflict with my personal beliefs, but that has never meant that I don't love them. And despite Mom preparing me for the eventuality of her death for years, I was clearly not in the acceptance frame of mind (particularly because at one point of the vacation she sat me down to discuss what she was leaving me in her will). Because of this, both Mom and Dad encouraged me to head back to Seattle to pull myself together and said they would call immediately if anything happened. I left on Tuesday.
A week passed and Mom went in for the procedure. She called me on the drive there and sounded tired but in good spirits. It should have occurred around 10AM PST and lasted an hour. At 1130 I got nervous and called my uncle. He said that they had postponed the cath because Mom was retaining too much fluid. They put her on a lasix IV and kept her overnight at the hospital. The next day (Tuesday), they moved forward. The cardiologist looked around at her blockages and pulled out immediately. Her valves were too obstructed for angio and stints wouldn't help either. His suggestion: Open Heart Surgery, and ASAP. Her front three vessels are 100% blocked. A heart surgeon was recommended and contacted. Her OHS must be performed by a heart surgeon who also specializes in nephrology, because her kidneys are in such poor condition. After two days of waiting, the surgeon responded and said (honestly, even though it's hard to hear) that he simply did not have the time in his schedule to come over and perform her surgery.
Then she was given a choice of drs and selected the one at Wake Forest. She was transferred on Thursday and my family was under the mistaken impression that she would be operated on the next morning. Thanks to Joe, I was able to get a last-minute flight to RDU Thursday night and arrived at 1300 on Friday to a voice mail saying that the surgery had been pushed back until Monday.
I stayed in the hospital for most of the next week, taking brief breaks for walks and an occasional yoga class (luckily there was a studio about half a mile from the hospital). The surgery was not done that Monday. Over the weekend she was diagnosed with a bladder infection, then pneumonia, and then her gout flared up and infectious disease was adamant that she had a bone infection (it isn't, but that didn't stop the head of ID from trying to convince Mom to have her toe cut off). It was a trying time as for three days she was on Cipro, which she is apparently allergic to. It wasn't until she begged another doctor to please change her antibiotics that anyone saw any sort of improvement and the turnaround was nothing short of miraculous. I firmly believe that the Cipro had been killing her--while she was on it, her blood pressure dropped incredibly low and her temperature had skyrocketed and continued to escalate.
Once she was doing better, her attending physician at the hospital told us that the surgeon refused to perform the surgery while she was on antibiotic therapy. She had a piccline put in and was sent home with the family. Arrangements were made for a home-care nurse to arrive 2x week and a number of family members (and Mom) were instructed on how to administer her IV medicine. At the end of this six-week treatment, the doctors will call and schedule the OHS and I will take additional FMLA time off and fly back to NC to help with her post-surgery recovery. Meanwhile, Mom looks better than she has in a year and is moving faster and farther too. I wonder if she hadn't been fighting that bladder infection for months (even in the hospital she had no physical pain symptoms so they didn't test for UTI until several days had passed) and the antibiotics were giving the rest of her system a break.
So that's where I am at the moment. Waiting. I've canceled my Burning Man plans as it looks like the OHS will take place around the end of August. This is far more important. Despite her improved condition, the OHS will still be risky, not only because of the renal failure, but because her circulatory system has been so ravaged by 50 years of diabetes the surgeon is having to use less-than-optimal veins for the triple bypass.
This is not how I planned on spending my summer vacation.
Is there anybody out there?
My absence can be explained thusly: In May, Mom was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure on top of her Type I Diabetes and Renal Failure. Her health was failing quickly and her heart surgeon wanted to perform a catheterization to see how severe the damage was and perform any angioplasty/place stints as necessary. I went home for a brief vacation to see the family at the beginning of June. Once I was off the plane, I was told about the upcoming procedure and how traumatizing it would be on her body. It is a simple procedure, but the doctors have to use a dye in order to see where the cath is going. Mom is allergic to this dye but there are no other options. They knew in advance that the dye would wreck havoc on her already-failing kidneys and talked to my family about the high chance of her going on dialysis. It needed to happen ASAP and since I was already there, I tried to take some FMLA time off to stay and be there for her. My plane was supposed to leave on a Sunday but the surgery was scheduled for a week from the following Monday so I originally tried to stay through the week.
I failed.
I was an emotional mess and pretty sure I had what could be described as a mild nervous breakdown that Monday. I might find family frustrating and occasionally in direct conflict with my personal beliefs, but that has never meant that I don't love them. And despite Mom preparing me for the eventuality of her death for years, I was clearly not in the acceptance frame of mind (particularly because at one point of the vacation she sat me down to discuss what she was leaving me in her will). Because of this, both Mom and Dad encouraged me to head back to Seattle to pull myself together and said they would call immediately if anything happened. I left on Tuesday.
A week passed and Mom went in for the procedure. She called me on the drive there and sounded tired but in good spirits. It should have occurred around 10AM PST and lasted an hour. At 1130 I got nervous and called my uncle. He said that they had postponed the cath because Mom was retaining too much fluid. They put her on a lasix IV and kept her overnight at the hospital. The next day (Tuesday), they moved forward. The cardiologist looked around at her blockages and pulled out immediately. Her valves were too obstructed for angio and stints wouldn't help either. His suggestion: Open Heart Surgery, and ASAP. Her front three vessels are 100% blocked. A heart surgeon was recommended and contacted. Her OHS must be performed by a heart surgeon who also specializes in nephrology, because her kidneys are in such poor condition. After two days of waiting, the surgeon responded and said (honestly, even though it's hard to hear) that he simply did not have the time in his schedule to come over and perform her surgery.
Then she was given a choice of drs and selected the one at Wake Forest. She was transferred on Thursday and my family was under the mistaken impression that she would be operated on the next morning. Thanks to Joe, I was able to get a last-minute flight to RDU Thursday night and arrived at 1300 on Friday to a voice mail saying that the surgery had been pushed back until Monday.
I stayed in the hospital for most of the next week, taking brief breaks for walks and an occasional yoga class (luckily there was a studio about half a mile from the hospital). The surgery was not done that Monday. Over the weekend she was diagnosed with a bladder infection, then pneumonia, and then her gout flared up and infectious disease was adamant that she had a bone infection (it isn't, but that didn't stop the head of ID from trying to convince Mom to have her toe cut off). It was a trying time as for three days she was on Cipro, which she is apparently allergic to. It wasn't until she begged another doctor to please change her antibiotics that anyone saw any sort of improvement and the turnaround was nothing short of miraculous. I firmly believe that the Cipro had been killing her--while she was on it, her blood pressure dropped incredibly low and her temperature had skyrocketed and continued to escalate.
Once she was doing better, her attending physician at the hospital told us that the surgeon refused to perform the surgery while she was on antibiotic therapy. She had a piccline put in and was sent home with the family. Arrangements were made for a home-care nurse to arrive 2x week and a number of family members (and Mom) were instructed on how to administer her IV medicine. At the end of this six-week treatment, the doctors will call and schedule the OHS and I will take additional FMLA time off and fly back to NC to help with her post-surgery recovery. Meanwhile, Mom looks better than she has in a year and is moving faster and farther too. I wonder if she hadn't been fighting that bladder infection for months (even in the hospital she had no physical pain symptoms so they didn't test for UTI until several days had passed) and the antibiotics were giving the rest of her system a break.
So that's where I am at the moment. Waiting. I've canceled my Burning Man plans as it looks like the OHS will take place around the end of August. This is far more important. Despite her improved condition, the OHS will still be risky, not only because of the renal failure, but because her circulatory system has been so ravaged by 50 years of diabetes the surgeon is having to use less-than-optimal veins for the triple bypass.
This is not how I planned on spending my summer vacation.