Complications

The past week has been exceedingly difficult and two posts back I explained why I wanted July to end. In fact, I accused the month of refusing to go gracefully. True to form it exited in ugly fashion.

Wednesday I started coming down with a vicious cold and hoped that Thursday would be a slow day for my father so that I could stay home and rest. At 10 AM I received a call from a nurse that he was going to have the stent placement procedure in an hour. To my surprise, the PET scan thought to be done later in the day had been performed at 7 AM. There went any chance to rest.

In my rush to get dressed and out the door for the forty-five minute drive, my cellphone holster fell off the belt.That one little event turned a bad situation far worse as the day progressed.

While I got there in time to see Dad off before sedation, the forgotten cellphone made things difficult because that’s how they contact you in the hospital these days. Our entire society now depends on the blasted things for all communications and what followed illustrates why this is not a good thing.

I was told to wait at the second floor area set aside for people awaiting the outcome of surgery for loved ones. Plushy and very open, it featured a monitor with patient numbers along with their status. Oddly, Dad didn’t get a number, perhaps because it was only guaranteed to be an EDG and the stent was optional depending on outcome. So began the long wait.

Which got far too long with no news despite my checking at the desk. Finally, well into the afternoon I heard my name over the hospital wide public announcing system. Reporting to the desk, it took us awhile to find out where I was supposed to go and after a wrong turn on the way, I finally got to where I’d been paged.

There the surgeon who had performed the endoscopy arrived after a few minutes, he’d been looking for me on every floor’s waiting area. I can only guess my having to wear a protective mask due to the sneezing and sore throat made me impossible to identify at a glance. In any case, it was not good news he had to deliver.

The procedure had started out well, in fact things looked far better than expected with Dad being cancer free according to biopsies and the PET scan. Testing the area to see if the tissue was flexible enough to place the metal tube revealed the gastric outlet was able to stretch. That changed the plans, because stretching the area is considered a safer thing to due with fewer complications.

If only that had been the result.

Stretching went very well until right at the end where withdrawing the scope showed what appeared to be a small tear. Now it needs to be understood just how dangerous and deadly stomach perforations can be, especially for someone in terrible shape such as my father. Peritonitis is the infection that happens from stomach acids and contents getting into the body cavity with dire consequences.

An X-ray or CT scan was scheduled and I was to wait back in Dad’s hospital room. Meanwhile, I had no way to call my sister. On my way there, I ran into a member from Church who was willing to loan her cell for a very short call (she was late for an appointment), but I knew the call would be anything but short, so I bade her farewell.

Once at the room on the sixth floor, I was greeted by upset faces on the nurses and my dad’s belongings having been rounded up. That gave me a pause, then they explained they had been notified he would be transferred to the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) and things didn’t look good. Finding out I couldn’t call out, I was taken to a consulting room with a phone, given the codes needed to dial out long distance, and left to await being taken to the third floor room my father would be in.

Somewhere along the way, I posted to Facebook hoping someone would be online nearby willing to loan a cellphone. That actually worked, to my shock. Having contacted my sister and eventually gotten to the third floor room, I once again waited for Dad to arrive.

And waited. And waited some more. Time slowed to a crawl. During this a friend delivered a cellphone, being familiar with the building due to having been a pizza delivery guy up until that day. He’d just quit the job to better take care of his ailing wife.

After awhile, the nurse in charge of the room had it with the wait and started making calls around to other units trying to find him. More time passed and I was paged over the PA system again. They had taken Dad straight to the operating room area (OR) from the CT scan, skipping the expected arrival in ICU.

They’d also been trying to call me at home and my cellphone the entire time. Sigh. From my end of things, Dad was lost in the system and from his end I was lost.

So off to the OR I went and finally got to see him. For the first time (other than the Thorazine for hiccups debacle), my father looked scared. Combining the situation as it had gone wrong with my apparently being missing had not helped his emotional state. I did my best to lighten his mood, reassure him that I’d been there the whole time, and check to see how strong he was physically. The latter looked good by my judgment.

A familiar face entered the prep room after the check list work by the nurses and anesthesiologist – the surgeon who’d installed his J-tube earlier this month. He’d be repairing the tear and inserting the G-tube for drainage in one go.

Sadly, this meant any chance of Dad eating solid food again or even liquids foods such a soup was gone. We were informed the surgery would last hours so I made the decision to go home and get my cellphone and help from our neighbor and friend, Randy, in driving me back. I wished the surgical staff good luck, went to the second floor waiting area to leave the other friend’s cellphone number, and sped home.

I was getting sicker by the moment to complicate things further.

Second half here.