Janey's Burst Appendix Story---Part 3

If I could make wishes come true, this part of the story would be featuring us getting ready to go home, Janey almost all better.  But I can't make wishes come true, so I'll have to tell the story as it is happening.

Yesterday morning, Janey's oxygen was still a big issue.  The plan was to get her up and walking around more, to try to get the fluid that had built up in her lungs down.  She had gained 13 pounds of water weight in 5 days, without eating literally anything at all.  So the swelling was pushing on her lungs, as a chest x-ray showed.  We tried a walk around the floor, followed by Janey sitting up in a chair.  She got very, very tired from this, and when she got in bed, she went into a sleep that was very hard to wake her from.  If the oxygen mask left her face even for a minute, her oxygen went down, sometimes as low as 77, which is very low indeed. 

One of the doctors on her surgical team came to see her, and it was decided it was time to take her to the the PICU, the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.  It was too hard to wake her and her breathing was too compromised to stay in the regular unit.  So around 2 pm, we were moved to the PICU. 

To work on getting Janey's fluid down, she was given a diuretic drug.  This worked pretty well.  Her swelling went down quite a lot, and gradually, as the evening and night went on, she was requiring less oxygen and was breathing better.  By morning, she was on room air.  Her oxygen levels now are around 93 or so, without oxygen---not perfect, but okay.

I got to listen in on her rounds this morning, where her case was discussed.  At that point, people were feeling better about things, and it was decided that if she stayed stable, possibly she would be able to go back to the regular floor this afternoon. 

Janey hasn't eaten really anything since last Monday, 8 days.  She's had IV fluids, but no food and most of the time, not even any water in her mouth.  The doctors said today she could have water, and clear liquids.  We offered her a choice, and she decided on a juice box.  She drank literally one tiny sip of it and threw up.  An hour later, she threw up again, far more than she had drunk.

By chance, the surgeon that had done her surgery was walking in the door as Janey threw up.  That started a discussion.  Janey's fever has never gone totally down for more than a few hours.  Today, it is higher than yesterday.  So, since she has shown her gut is still not working at all, the surgeon, Dr. Kelleher, said she might have an abscess in her digestive trait, as she had warned us could happen. 

So---tomorrow she will have an ultrasound to see if there's an abscess.  If there is, she will have a drain put in to work on clearing it.  That will not be fun.

Either way, it's probable that tomorrow she will have a special IV put in to allow her to get nutrition in an IV.  I think this is called TPN.  Her water drinking privileges are over for now.  She will stay in the ICU for at least another night.

Those are the facts.  My feelings---well, I will hold off on getting  into a lot of those.  It's all too raw right now.  I'll just say that just after she came to the ICU yesterday, I went to get something to eat while Tony was with Janey.  Somehow, my mind was such that I went outside and got lost.  I walked around the huge hospital complex aimlessly, unsure how to find anything, and pretty much not caring.  It was raining hard and I was numb to that and everything else.  When I finally ran across the front entrance, pretty much by change, and found my way to the cafeteria, I felt like I had forgotten how to do the most basic things in life.  There were lines to get hot food, but it seemed far too complicated to do that.  I grabbed the first sandwich and soda that hit my hands, and sat down to eat them.  I was mostly done with the sandwich when I realized it had olives in it.  I hate olives with a passion.  Then I looked at my soda.  It was Sprite Zero.   I hate diet soda.  All this to say---I was completely, totally, absolutely out of my head overwhelmed.

I calmed down after that, and today I am feeling back like myself, in reality.  Not to say it feels like any reality I expected to happen.  I would not have been surprised at many things that could have happened with Janey, but this?  She has barely been sick a day in her life. 

I was thinking how it would feel in the pre-internet world to be here.  As scary as this all is, I don't feel alone.  When I was awake in the middle of the night last night and wrote a post on Facebook, people saw it and commented within minutes.  That's an example of the miracle of having friends all over the world, people I have never met in person but that I have met with my heart.  Thank you, friends.