I was going to wait to post anything until I knew that Jonathan was allllll better and the whole mess of the entire Autumn season was behind us, but alas it's the first day of Winter and we find ourselves in a new room at Duke University Hospital.
Yesterday, Jonathan went for his... fourth?... power washing of the pseudocyst. It's the same endoscopic procedure he's had before. They knock him out, put a scope down his esophagus into his stomach, pull out the four double pigtail stents that were there holding open the new passage between his stomach and the pseudocyst, and then stick the scope and some other instruments (e.g., rat tooth forceps) in there and pull off all the dead tissue they can get. Then they stick in new stents and that's that. Except that yesterday, when Jonathan woke up from surgery, he was in lots and lots of pain. Of course the one time that he's actually having this outpatient procedure done as an outpatient, something goes wrong.
My mom was there because I can't miss more work and the kids had their Christmas show and it was supposed to be a relatively simple procedure for once, so she got to experience all the fear and stress firsthand while I got the calls and texts at work and cried and ate my feelings and went through the motions of the day until I could get to the hospital last night.
So, what happened? Something went wrong when they were stretching the opening between the stomach and the pseudocyst, and a bowel perforation happened. Basically that just means that the opening tore, and air escaped into the abdominal cavity. Apparently, having free air in the abdominal cavity is no bueno. Super painful. And if other digestive juices are leaking into the cavity, that's also bad. And that's were we find ourselves now. In the hospital, WAITING. Because that's what you do in the hospital, and that's especially what you do in the hospital on the weekend.
Jonathan is under the care of General Surgery, which is new; every other time he's been admitted, he's been under the care of General Medicine. But this time the options are watch and wait and hope that it's just air in the abdomen and it gets reabsorbed by his body, or find out that it's fluid and needs surgical intervention. So the surgeons are on the case. Early this morning they said it would be watch and wait all weekend with a CT scan on Monday. Then later this morning they said his abdomen is so distended that he needs a CT scan today. And just now another doc came by and said maybe CT tomorrow, but probably Monday. So there's that. The CT will show whether he's leaking fluid into his abdominal cavity, and how much air is there, and all that.
Yesterday, Jonathan went for his... fourth?... power washing of the pseudocyst. It's the same endoscopic procedure he's had before. They knock him out, put a scope down his esophagus into his stomach, pull out the four double pigtail stents that were there holding open the new passage between his stomach and the pseudocyst, and then stick the scope and some other instruments (e.g., rat tooth forceps) in there and pull off all the dead tissue they can get. Then they stick in new stents and that's that. Except that yesterday, when Jonathan woke up from surgery, he was in lots and lots of pain. Of course the one time that he's actually having this outpatient procedure done as an outpatient, something goes wrong.
My mom was there because I can't miss more work and the kids had their Christmas show and it was supposed to be a relatively simple procedure for once, so she got to experience all the fear and stress firsthand while I got the calls and texts at work and cried and ate my feelings and went through the motions of the day until I could get to the hospital last night.
So, what happened? Something went wrong when they were stretching the opening between the stomach and the pseudocyst, and a bowel perforation happened. Basically that just means that the opening tore, and air escaped into the abdominal cavity. Apparently, having free air in the abdominal cavity is no bueno. Super painful. And if other digestive juices are leaking into the cavity, that's also bad. And that's were we find ourselves now. In the hospital, WAITING. Because that's what you do in the hospital, and that's especially what you do in the hospital on the weekend.
Jonathan is under the care of General Surgery, which is new; every other time he's been admitted, he's been under the care of General Medicine. But this time the options are watch and wait and hope that it's just air in the abdomen and it gets reabsorbed by his body, or find out that it's fluid and needs surgical intervention. So the surgeons are on the case. Early this morning they said it would be watch and wait all weekend with a CT scan on Monday. Then later this morning they said his abdomen is so distended that he needs a CT scan today. And just now another doc came by and said maybe CT tomorrow, but probably Monday. So there's that. The CT will show whether he's leaking fluid into his abdominal cavity, and how much air is there, and all that.
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