Another Monday

I went to sleep Sunday night with the stent set to drain into my intestine instead of the little bag.  Most of the night went very well and I was having a good sleep.  I'm a little groggy about what did happen this morning and when it happened.  I awoke about 5:30 (I think) to the worst session of pain I've had here.  It was in the area of the stent surgery.  The chronic pain in my back was much less.  Call this stent area pain 8 or 9 out of 10.  (They want everything rated from 0 to 10.)  This was the first time I buzzed nurse Kathy and begged shamelessly for morphine.  She gave me a pill and said I could have another one, called a breakthrough dose, in an hour and I drifted off to sleep again.  She opened the stent so it drained into the tube again.  I awoke in an hour, in pain again, buzzed and got the breakthrough dose.  Kathy went home at 7 am and I have nurse Aimie now.  Both are excellent.  My blood pressure is way down: seventy something over fifty something.  Aimie is hooking me back up to some IV fluid.  Gotta go.

OK, I'm on the drip again.  Dr Nanji was just in.  There is a bit of a concern that I have an infection so I may get an antibiotic later.

He says I am definitely not going home today.

Pat Gruber just called me from Stratford but Aimie was still working me over so I couldn't talk much.

It's 2 pm now.

I've maybe taken too long to continue this as I left you thinking I was in great pain with very little blood pressure.

The pain was gone within a few minutes of my second dose of morphine early this morning and I have been comfortable ever since.  I'm back to using the little bag to collect bile.  It is my feeling that the stent is not working.  A couple of doctors have been in, poked me a bit and gone away.  I think they have to have another meeting to decide what to do next.  I'm wondering if they will try another surgery to get a stent in so I won't have to use the little bag.  My blood pressure has come up - not a lot but at least it is moving in the right direction.

6 pm

Anne and Stephen were here from roughly 11 am to 6 pm.  Norm and Gail were here for most of the afternoon but not quite as much as Anne and Stephen.

I'm back on IV with a couple of bags.  One bag is NaCl and the other is an antibiotic.  I think they have decided that I have an infection from the stent and that the stent does not work when it is directed to drain into my intestine.  It does drain into the bag fine and that has allowed me to feel a little better and my skin to get back to a more normal colour.  I think they are consulting with each other trying to decide what to do for me next.  There has not been any new talk of me going home soon - they want to get the infection down first.  Anne gave me a nice bath while she was here today.  I'm going to clean my teeth, make some phone calls and try to turn in early. We have discovered that the best food here is the chicken fingers in the coffee shop downstairs.

9:30 pm

My blood pressure is just fine: 107 over 59.

They have decided to have a better look at what the stent is doing by injecting a dye into it and following the dye on an x-ray.  I'm to have that done sometime tomorrow.  That means no breakfast and likely no lunch.

There are two bags on the IV pump for overnight: KCl in one and something called Piperacillin and Tazobactam with dextrose in the other.

Bedtime