Wednesday September 12, 2012
Today we start out the day talking to the Dr and he says we are at a point he thinks going home is ok, except for the belly pain that is persisting and wants to get an X-ray. He is thinking it won’t show much and tells us if that is the case we will be getting a CT scan to ensure we know what is going on before we leave. I think, going home is a pleasant thought. There are many things I want to do before this cancer grows more.
About 5pm our nurse comes in, she has been great, and takes my Buddy off a feeding machine that they wanted to try for nutrition as he is hardly eating or drinking. She says he just got posted as NPO ( can’t eat/drink anything and usually means a test of some sort) and the Dr was right outside to talk about it. The Dr comes in a few minutes later and tells us as he had expected to find nothing they found something in the X-ray. They found air in the abdomen and that is not supposed to be there and it is a bad thing. He says he is concerned and has called the surgical team. He continues to tell me why it is bad, it means there is air/gas escaping from either the stomach, intestines or bowel and usually if there is air escaping there is bacteria as well.
That is a problem.
He continues to say we have a CT scan and wanted an empty belly I case we need to go to surgery ASAP. The surgeons come in and talk to us as we are preparing to go to CT scan, put in another IV line, change his NG tube to a suction tube and talk to us. The head surgeon comes in and reviews the case telling us that he feels the CT scan would be of no use and we will need exploratory surgery to find the leak. It will begin as arthroscopic surgery, but will probably end up opening him up. I ask what about the healing from that as his last surgery on his shunt took over a month to heal. He said it will be that then some as the chance of infection is even more present in the intestines. The surgeons continue to explain they will give him fluid and if the hole is not repairable due to the fluid they will have to close up the incision with a mesh and go back in another time to make the repair. I again ask if the chemo is going to have an effect on his healing (an answer I know) he said they have pumps and devices that would assist if it was not healing properly.
Our oncologists met with us and helped us understand what to expect of surgery. It would be a lot on his already compromised body.
What kind of decisions are these for me to make? It hurts to think about it let alone make this painful decision. I can’t help the tears as they fill my eyes and roll down my checks.
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