July Hospital Stay

Hi Everyone:

I know it has been 3 weeks since I posted anything. I have spent that time in the hospital. I went to the ER on 21 June 2012 expecting to be admitted due to dehydration. I couldn’t get enough fluids in me for the normal person, let alone the sick like myself.

Anything I put into me came right back up. Sure enough they did admit me. Not only was I dehydrated I was also in a lot of pain. During my time in the hospital I had a period of about a week that I have no recall of.

It took me coming back to realm of this world to get the pain under control. Because of a crazy rule about how much pain medicine was allowed to be kept in reserve on the floor.  I needed 9 units of this medicine and there were 10 in the storage. Because of there being another patient on my floor needing this medication they could not give me mine. There system would let them give me a partial dosage of my medication. By the time I had learned this I had been waiting for pain medication for over TWO hours!

I requested to speak to whoever was in charge and I raised a bit of HELL!!! It was night time and the real big bosses of course where off for the day. However, the next day those who could really do something did resolve the problem. In fact while I was taking a sponge bathe the next day the head of the pharmacy came to apologized to me. But without knocking in any way he walked in on me! He was more embarrassed than I was! Modesty is something you lose in the hospital.

The reason that I could not keep any food down was the mass on my neck was crushing my throat to the point that I could not swallow. Because they needed to get food into me without waiting for radiation to be completed and if it was successful, they put in a food tube. They wanted to scope my throat to see what if any blockage I had and asked if they could insert a tube if they found one. I do NOT feel that I am at the end of my battle with cancer so I told them yes.  I expected that there was some sort of blockage so I gave them permission to insert the food tube. I am now able to eat soft foods. However, the radiation of my throat caused a side effect of a wicked sore throat. I was transported by ambulance from the hospital to D’Amour Center for Cancer Care so that I only missed 1 treatment. I only missed that treatment because the pain was not under control yet. The guys and gals that work on the ambulance service were great. They not only treated me professionally when it was right we all laughed.

I was also blessed by having the same treatment team at D’Amour for this round of treatment that I had had before. They are a great team and we get along wonderfully.

It is supposed to last for 8 to 10 days after the last day of treatment. TODAY, was the last day of treatment, they let me take my mask home. I had to wear the mask to keep my head stable during each treatment. So my sore throat should go away somewhere between the 20th & the 23^rd of this month.

The last few days of my hospital stay was all training for me. Both my day and night nurse stopped using the feeding tube and took the time instead to teach me how to do it. Although I made a few minor mistakes at the very beginning before I was discharged I had it down. They teased me that I looked like the “mad” chemist watching me do it to myself. I can’t swallow pills of any size until the sore throat clears up. So I was taught how to crush them and flush them down into me through the “G” tube. So I fixed dinner, ate it, had my meds and cleaned up in just 20 minutes. It used to take me an hour to have my formula in the hospital. The body doesn’t like this change so I don’t “eat” has much at each meal. So far that is working very well. Before I reduced the amount of “formula” per “feed” it would not stay down. But now, so far, no trouble; I expect this to last for about two weeks. Half a can of “formula” at a “feeding” seems to work so it will take more time to get the “food” down.  Rats! Rats! Rats! About a third of dinner just came up. But that is better than all of it yesterday.

I am very happy to say that the last three days of my hospital stay was great. I made a great new friend, Caroline.  She is a great gal we laughed and learned from each other. The nurses described us like a couple of high school girls having a sleep over. We were up most of the night one night. At times Caroline and I were laughing so hard we were crying. I look forward to getting a hold of Caroline in the next few days. I felt really good, and I learned a lot.

My nurses Debbie and Renee are the tops. They did a great job of teaching me and working with my learning techniques. They both told me I could teach classes or become an RN. For a few minutes Renee put her RN ID badge on me. We had someone else take a picture of the two of us with my cell phone.  These gals encouraged me every step of the way and when I ran into a problem they gave me a chance, if they could, to figure out the problem and its solution. This is the way I feel I learn the most.

I spent the last three days in the hospital trying to learn what I needed to not just about my ‘G’ tube but about any and all services that I could get for us once I got home and doing what I could to get them in place before being discharged.

The beginning of July each year is when new Interns and Residents come to work at the hospital. So I said good-bye to one (Dr. Lee) and hello to another one (Dr. Yang). Both seemed to be very good I really liked them. The attending doctor over the new group was really great. He came in with his entire group of “student” and guided my doctor along with the rest. When he learned that I was dragging my feet about going home because I wanted everything properly lined up at home first he was great. He turned to the students and asked them what has my doctor they could do to help move that process along. And my goodness did they ever move it forward. The very next day I say so many doctors and social worker type people that I had one talk to me while I ate my dinner. But thanks to their help everything that could be done from the hospital got done.

Now I am home and completing that process, the things that had to wait till I was really home. I came home a couple of days earlier than I thought I wanted to. But my nurse Renee explained the benefit of coming home before the weekend and she was very right about it. Yesterday when I got home the “formula” that I need to live on had not been delivered even though the company had been here. I made one phone call and it was resolved. It would have taken a lot more work on a Friday or Saturday to correct this type of problem.

If the last three weeks were as crazy for you as they were for me then I hope I hope it was better stuff than a stay in the hospital.