Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

Thank you ALL so much for your thoughts and prayers! They were answered yesterday. Mom saw Dr. Seligson for another follow-up appointment and things looked really good. So good, in fact, that her CHEST TUBE IS OUT!!! No more air-leak and no more fat-leak! She is very ready for a steak dinner, but Dr. Seligson advised her to take it slow. She can't wait for that filet at the boat. She said it feels so good!

She met with the oncologist, Dr. Stephenson, on Monday and discussed her treatment plan. Unfortunately, it wasn't as she expected. Originally, she was being told that it would be eight weeks. Somewhere along the line it has doubled. She also wanted to do some traveling before she started to feel bad again. Dr. Stephenson advised her against that. He said that the longer she waits to start treatment, the effectiveness decreases. He said that without treatment, she has a 50/50 chance of recurrence. With chemo, there is a 10-15% increase in her favor, making that a 60-65% chance that it will not come back. She thought about it a lot over the last month and is willing to take those odds.

They are going to use two different chemo drugs during her treatment. The first one is Cisplatin (the Lance Armstrong chemo drug). This one will take the longest to infuse, approximately 6-7 hours one time every four weeks. The second is Navelbine. She will get this one weekly with these infusions lasting for 1-2 hours. Dr. Stephenson informed us really well about these drugs and made her feel very comfortable with his plan for her. She is now taking applications for drivers for chemo days on the days that we are working.

She's really hoping the rain will let up soon. She's ready to get out to the golf course for some putting practice before it gets too hot. =-) Thank you all again for your continued thoughts and prayers. We are so grateful and extremely blessed to be surrounded by such caring wonderful people.

Follow-Up With Dr. Seligson

Mom saw Dr. Seligson today for her first follow-up appointment. He is pleased with her progress and said her lungs sound really good. Today's big test was seeing if she still has an air leak and, unfortunately, she still does. He is impressed with the small amount of drainage she has been having. He decided the chest tube needs to stay in for another week. Also, she gets to add more food to her restricted diet. She's pretty excited about that. Dr. Seligson said that she's earned the right to "cheat" a little. When she goes back next week he said that if the drainage stays minimal and the air leak is gone he will take it out. But, if the air leak is still there, he will pull out the tube a little and re-stitch it in to secure it, as he thinks this will help speed the sealing up. Many prayers are needed for this week that the drainage stays minimal and that the air leak seals up. Mom is SO READY to get the chest tube out. She said it's really hindering her sleeping on her right side!

Just In Case You Didn't Hear....

Many of you already know, but just in case you didn't hear, Mom came home from the hospital on Tuesday. She's doing really good. Just being home makes a world of difference in her recovery. She's loving visitors coming to keep her company. Unfortunately, I've had a cold this week so I've had to stay away. Hopefully, it will disappear soon so I can get back over there and help out more. The diet is going okay. She sees Dr. Seligson on Wednesday, so hopefully the leaks are all sealed up and she can get the chest tube out and eat a regular fatty meal. Keep your fingers crossed!

HAPPY EASTER!!!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. Mom had a pretty good day yesterday. She told us all about her visitors on Saturday. Many thanks go to Pastor Kent and Carla for the bunny ears. Also, apparently the nursing staff started to wonder about the crowd Mom runs with after Bob, Kathy, Norm, and Bev came up to visit....all decked out in their biker gear. She loved it though! As for Easter, Mom thoroughly enjoyed her plain potato, steamed vegetables, and flax seed. Mmm, mmm! She is doing really good with the no-fat diet she is now on. The drainage from the chest tube was only 40ml from 1am until 7pm yesterday. This was a HUGE change. Dr. Seligson was extremely impressed that he took one of the chest tubes out and changed the chamber to a smaller one (the new one only holds about 80ml) because she still has the air-leak. He told Mom that he expects it to seal up in about another week since the fat duct issue is now under control. Soooo, this means if the new chest tube goes well today.....SHE'S COMING HOME TOMORROW!!! What a blessing! As you can expect, she's getting pretty antsy to get out of here.

Sorry For Not Updating Sooner

Sorry, sorry, sorry!!! We just enjoyed Mom's progress so much that we forgot to make time to update the blog.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday went pretty well. Mom met with the oncologist. He basically introduced himself and told her that they would meet after she goes home to discuss her treatment options. Yes, they got the tumor out, but they still have people do some chemotherapy to reduce the recurrence. She's been getting up walking a lot. She takes several walks a day. Unfortunately the chest tube is still in. She still has too much drainage to take it out. We'll get to that in a minute. Her lung is doing sell. The area of collapse is gone and it is completely reinflated. Thursday, Jeremy and I came up. This was his first time seeing her since the day before her surgery. I was a little difficult for them both, but they both benefited from the visit a great deal.

We noticed yesterday that the clear light yellow drainage was more like skin milk in color and clarity. We didn't know if this was normal or not. Also, the drainage started to increase. Today, I was here when Dr. Salamat and Dr. Seligson came to see her. According to them, the skim milk drainage is fats. Okay, how's that? Apparently, there is a duct that runs from the intestines where they absorb fats from what you eat. The duct winds up the body and distributes the fats where they're supposed to go. The portion of the duct that was behind her lung in the area that was removed has a small leak. Dr. Seligson said there are two ways to fix the problem. One way is to do another surgery. He doesn't want to do that because she is doing so good otherwise. She just flat out doesn't want another surgery. The other way, is to restrict her diet limiting the fat she takes in and wait for the leak to seal up. She said, "Oh yummy!" Dr. Seligson is on all weekend, so he said if he didn't see any improvement by late tomorrow he will restrict her diet even further and have her get a PICC line put in and have her put on TPN (IV nutrition). Long story short, she's here for probably another week according to Dr. Seligson.

She's making the best of it though. We're grateful that the tube was still in and caught the problem before it came out and she went home and caused a HUGE problem. We've hooked her up with everything from crosswords to movies. We even figured out that her laptop isn't as old as we thought it was. It actually connected to the guest access here so she now has internet to occupy her time. She is remaining in good spirits given the new development. I forgot to give you all her new room number, it is 3055. It's not as good as her other unit, but it's home until they say otherwise.

Thank you all again for the continued prayers. She is definitely one lucky lady!

Post-Op Day #7-Turned The Corner

Mom had a pretty sleepless night last night, she said. However, she said she feels wonderful today. She said she took several walks around the unit and has been up in the chair most of the day. She added that she hasn't had to take anything for pain! Jodie, Aunt Chris, and I stopped in on her this evening, and I have to say she looks amazing. Her cough, color, appetite, and energy are so much better than they have been, even better is that she's not sleepy anymore. She saw Dr. Seligson today and he said he was pleased with her progress. There is still no official word on when she will get to come home. She still has the chest tube in and in order for her to get it out, she has to have less than 150ml per day of drainage from it. Yesterday she was about 800ml, and from then to today she had about 400ml so we think she's on the right path. She can't wait to get home, especially to see the grandkids and we can't wait for her to get home. It's just not the same without her around!

Post-Op Day #6-On The Right Track

Patsy said she had a pretty good night. She was able to sleep about two hours at a time but getting back to sleep fairly quickly after waking to take more pain medicine. She is doing really good with the Darvocet they have been giving her. The Reglan seems to be helping as well for the nausea. For lunch, she ate half a bowl of soup and a few bites of salad. We have made a date for later this afternoon to take another walk. She wanted to take a nap first, I'm pretty sure yesterday's walk tired her out quite a bit. She even made a dinner request for a cheeseburger kid's meal with a Frosty from Wendy's. Her appetite seems to be getting better (better meaning she actually has a small one) without the oxygen on. Dad is staying tonight, so hopefully she'll have as good of night as she did last night.

Thank you all for keeping her in your prayers. We know she still has a long road to recovery, but given the alternative, I couldn't be happier with her progress.

Post-Op Day #5-Making Strides

Well, I'm a day late posting this, but better late than never. On Saturday, Mom made some incredible progress. Jason stayed Friday night and said she had a pretty good night compared to the nights past. Her oxygen was decreased to 1liter overnight and the respiratory therapist said she her O2 sats were 98-99% so he removed her oxygen all together. She remained off oxygen all day. Later in the afternoon the fog of morphine seemed to finally lift and she decided she wanted to take a walk. Jodie & I helped her down the hall. I'm not good at distances, but I would guess it's about 75yards to the waiting room. She made it there like a champ. She did so good, she tolerated it very well and didn't get dizzy or short of breath like we thought she would. We sat there and rested for a little bit and met her sister Patsy and niece Pam there. Patsy is staying this night. Then she headed back to her room, even speeding up a bit. This is a huge accomplishment for her. She even said that it did feel pretty good to get up and walk around. She ate the most for dinner since she's been here. She had chicken and rice and ate about a fourth of the chicken and a couple tablespoons of rice. We're glad her appetite seems to be starting to coming back.

I was getting a little nervous because her telemetry monitor kept alarming that she was having PVC's (premature ventricular contractions, the ventricles contracting out of turn). Occasionally, they aren't a big deal. It just made me nervous when she would have 10 and even 12 in a minute about every 20-30 minutes. Her nurse didn't seemed alarmed, so I'll trust her on that. I eventually talked to a couple that are much more knowledgeable about this and they said they were normal for what she was doing at the time. They would always happen when she would be sitting up, repositioning, or coughing. This is her body's way of getting use to the new change.

Post-Op Day #4

Well, there is not much to update today. Things are pretty much the same as yesterday. The atelectasis is unchanged (good, it's not worse!), but Mom's appetite also remains unchanged. She is still VERY sleepy. Since the morphine/fentanyl incident, they have changed her to oral pain meds which she is requesting very rarely. It's just frustrating because we can't figure out why she is sleepier now than she was the day after her surgery. Her oxygen levels on her blood gasses continue to be normal and they even took her off of continuous pulse oximetry because she is now on 2 liters of oxygen. Today, when I called the nurse to check on her she ensured me that all the critical things (lungs, heart, incision) we are most concerned about continue to be doing just fine. That, we are very grateful for. Jodie stayed with her last night and earlier today. She said she had a pretty good morning. She did, however, have a little elevation in her white blood cell count (WBC's, the infection fighters) to 17,000. According to the night nurse, it's not "bad", they just want to take every precaution to ensure that she doesn't get infected or pneumonia so they started her on Zosyn, a pretty heavy duty antibiotic.

Tonight, Jason is staying with her. He'll do just fine also. He seems to be doing just as good of job annoying tonight's nurse as I did. I got there after work and she was in Mom's room assessing her and turned to me and said, "Oh, are you the daughter?" What can I say, I made an impression....

Post-Op Day #3-Update

Mom's nurse just told us the results of her latest chest x-ray. It showed a "slight increase in the atelectasis of the right lower lobe", meaning the collapsed area has gotten a little bit bigger. We have yet to know what the lung doctor has in store for her.

She is still very sleepy. She did eat a little bit of her lunch today which she managed to keep down. Jodie is working on dinner with her. Dr. Seligson, the surgeon, decided that her tiny body just can't tolerate Morphine like other people so he had the nurse shut it off and switch her to pain meds by mouth.

As soon as we know anything else we'll post it!

Post-Op Day #3-Minor Setback

Mom had a pretty restless night. She had several bouts of nausea. Yesterday around 2pm they placed the Fentanyl patch. Somewhere between then and about 7pm we noticed that her IV had wet bad so as a result, she wasn't getting the Morphine IV like we had thought. About an hour or two after her IV was replaced she started with the nausea. She received 3 doses of Zofran overnight that seemed to help. Dr. Seligson's nurse practitioner, Jo came in and we had the revelation about the combined effect of the two meds. She decided that the Fentanyl patch that Dr. Salamat ordered was unnecessary since she was having adequate pain relief from the Morphine PCA and was the culprit behind her nausea so she removed it on the spot.

She did do much better with her coughing. They almost sounded normal. She was very pleased with herself and was even bragging about it to Dr. Seligson this morning.

Her O2 sats are fine, running at 95-98% even while up in the chair. Sometime overnight they decreased her oxygen to 3liters. This is an improvement from the 6liters she was on last night. She, however, is extremely tired today, only waking to us nudging her telling her to wake up.

Since then Dr. Salamat came to round on Mom and told us (with her"best bedside manner") that according to this morning's chest x-ray that the lower remaining portion of Mom's right lung has collapsed. Dr. Salamat thinks that this is possibly due to a mucous plug in that portion of the lung. She ordered blood gasses and a repeat chest x-ray. Depending on those results we will know if Mom has to undergo another bronchoscopy to remove the plug in an attempt to help "reinfalte" that area. We will know the results in about an hour. Please pray for her. She needs as much help as she can get to get over this hurdle.

I will update this again once we know more.

Post Op Day #2

So far so good up on the unit. Last night they increased Mom's oxygen to five liters from the two she was on earlier in the day. Her O2 sats have increased to 96-98%. They also added a humidifier to the oxygen since it can be very drying to the inside of the nose and air passages. Her color is so much better today compared to yesterday.

Dad said she had a good night last night. Dad was here when the doctor came to see her this morning. I'm not sure which one it was, but they read her the riot act about coughing and deep breathing. If she doesn't, she will more than likely develop pneumonia. We don't want this at all. Anita, her nurse today, told me that her latest chest x-ray didn't show any pneumonia on it...let's keep it that way.

Her pain seems to be a little better. She was up sitting in a chair today when I got here. Dad said she had been up for about two hours. She was getting tired so we got her back in bed. She gets up and down just fine, all things considered. She got a little cat nap in after lunch which was what she needed. Also, to help with her pain, they started her in a Fentanyl patch, in addition to the Morphine PCA.

That's all we know so far today. We want to thank you all for your continued well-wishes and prayers.