Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The First 24

It has been raining hard all day. So glad for the sump pump and that it is still pumping, have a few contacts who have water in their basement.

Got up this morning and made Mom some cream of wheat, a poached egg, a piece of toast, coffee and some apple juice. Ate it all!

I made a few calls to her doctor, and dentist and made some appts.
Then I called the nurse practitioner to find out if Mom needed a heparin flush on her catheter(like she thought) or if the saline flush was good enough. Turns out she needed the heparin flush.

We headed up to the hospital today to see Dr. Roy in the OPD so he could look at her suture line and remove the rest of her staples. Mom has a little infection in her suture line, so Dr. Roy had to open the dermal layer a bit, cleaned it out and they have put packing in. (this is the point where I got a bit queasy - maybe because it was hurting Mom so much? but I just looked away) Once the Dr. was done the nurse irrigated the wound and asked if I wanted to see an internal stitch - and I was OK with that so I took a look. I'll be honest, it's a little weird looking at human tissue and a little more weird to be looking at my Mom's tissue, but anyway. I took a picture, so that Mom could see her wound, not sharing that one with you. Home care is now supposed to come everyday and repack the wound and check on her stoma. It is looking like Mom will NOT be able to start chemo again for 4-6 weeks. We are scheduled to go back to OPD to see Dr. Hardy, who performed her surgery, on the 21st of July (he's away right now).

Mom got a copy of her blood results and tried to get a copy of her OR procedure - it was kind of funny because the nurse that was going to print it was having trouble retrieving it, so Mom helped her!! haha, but the record wasn't done yet - so nothing to print. I wish Mom's surgical unit had just said that it wasn't complete yet instead of telling Mom she had to submit a request though Medical Records.

We headed down to the Cancer Centre to get Mom's cath flushed. Sonja did an awesome job, before Mom could finish "instructing" her on how to remove the needle she was done. Nurses always make the worst patients ;). I showed Sonja Mom's blood results and Mom's potassium is a bit low, which makes sense.. she really hasn't been getting her nutrients. Sonja also made a copy and put it in Mom's chart to show Dr. Graham.

I would have thought the unit would have checked her results..... and you know where this thought it going. I'm not really impressed. What a difference between the units. For the most part I felt invisible on the surgical unit :(.

After the hospital Mom was pretty sore (from her suture line) so I took her home and then went and got groceries. Found some carrot soup (by chance) that had LOTS of potassium in it so I bought it along with lots of other foods that are good. Mike met me at the grocery store and kept me company. Picked up Mom's BP medication on the way out and then went home.

Heated up some delicious cabbage casserole, mashed potatoes (thanks to the Adamchick's!!) and some store bought lasagna. We feasted on that for supper. Mom ate a bit of food and she hasn't had any abdominal pain yet so that is promising!!

The cabbage casserole was a huge hit with everyone! We loved it Jim, Lori and Melynda!! Maybe we could get the recipe!?? :)) <3