Posted in At the Doctor's, Blessings, Boston, Family, Friends, Holidays, Hospital life, Keith, Kiddos, mito, Tummy troubles on 26 December 2010| Leave a Comment »
Today marks Day #21 in patient at MGH. It also marks our first real blizzard since moving to New England.
I apologize for the delay in posts. The second go at the GJ procedure was a success, but I’ve been in a significant amount of pain and discomfort since then. And not too much has changed – despite yet another tube running into my body. Nonetheless, this will likely be a long post to get everyone updated on the latest news.
Posted in At the Doctor's, Boston, Friends, Hospital life, mito, Vampires on 21 December 2010| 2 Comments »
I want to start out by thanking our Brandeis math friends (and significant others) for keeping us entertained last night with a few rounds of the game Dominion. I’m incredibly grateful that you were around to keep my mind off the reasons I’m still inpatient and rather focused on some fun!
I especially appreciate the distraction as yesterday was not the most pleasant day. I started the day finding out my potassium levels were critically low. (And how the medical team didn’t know that they were even getting low beats me.) I was started off on a bag of potassium. I finished it 4 hours later and had my blood drawn again. Potassium levels were still critical and magnesium levels were incredibly low as well. Two more bags added to my IV pole. Blood drawn at the end of those. Potassium rose to 2.9 (low “normal” is 3.5). Another bag hung through the night. Blood drawn and TPN hooked up overnight. Four hours later blood was drawn again. Potassium went down! Needless to say, I’m hooked up to yet another bag of Potassium in addition to the TPN. This had better work!
The low Potassium levels have certainly been taking effect on my body. My heart has been doing some crazy things. Not only have I been rapidly swinging from tachycardia (high heart rate) to bradycardia (low heart rate), but I’ve also been skipping beats pretty regularly. My hospitalist thinks this will likely improve with my electrolyte levels so it’s nothing to be too concerned about – yet. We’ll revisit the issue once my electrolyte levels have improved.
On to the good new… Yesterday, they finally placed a PICC line so that I could get some IV nutrition (TPN – which looks like melted marshmallow fluff) while waiting for the GJ tubes to help. An added advantage of the PICC line is that all that blood that they’ve been drawing over the past 30 hours has been able to come straight from the PICC – no more sticks!!! And once the GJ tube is in and properly working, we can pull the PICC line.
Posted in At the Doctor's, Blessings, Coming together, Family, Friends, Holidays, Hospital life, Immune Deficiency, Kiddos, mito, Tummy troubles, Tutoring on 20 December 2010| 1 Comment »
It looks like Christmas came to my room and spewed red and green vomit everywhere. And I love it!
I’ll admit it: I was starting to lose my spirit a little after I’d been in two weeks, without an end in sight, and the projection of spending Christmas at MGH. I’d been poked and prodded every which way. Despite what my medical team was doing, my blood work was abnormal. And my first glimpse at freedom (the first attempt at the GJ tube procedure) failed. Fortunately, I’ve surrounded myself with people who make it nearly impossible to lose one’s spirit!
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
Still Miles to Go 