The Surgery

So on October 3, Mom was admitted to ORMC. She was so dehydrated and malnourished that they spent the first week just trying to get her physically strong enough for surgery. At the same time, they wanted to rest the colon. So she spent that week on ice chips only getting TPN (nutrition) intravenously. To accomplish this, they put in a PIC (sp?) line - a semi-permanent IV line with a bigger needle than a normal IV. She also had depleted her Potassium, so they had to replace that. [Things I learned - if your potassium is either too low or too high, it will effect your heart. Normal is 3.0-5.0. At ORMC, they like 4.0.] Mom was so over it by this time; she just wanted the pain to end. She would often say, "Just knock me out for a week and wake me up when I am all better."

I should mention that the whole time (and every other time) in Dr Philips, Mom had a private room. At ORMC, she was admitted initially to the Burn Trauma Step-Down ICU on the 4th floor just to get her in the door while a room on the 9th floor was opening up. This (444) was a semi-private room. In a "what a small world" coincidence, the woman in the room with mom had at one point worked for the doctor's office my mom and I go to; so at some point, I am sure we met before. When they ran the first set of labs and put a heart monitor on her, they determined to keep her in this room since it was a more monitored floor and they were worried that her potassium level (about 1.9 at that time) would impact her heart function. Mom was not thrilled at having to share a room, but all in all, we could not have asked for a better roommate for her. Even though they were complete opposites, she was very nice and didn't mind my hanging out till late at night.

At 7:30 am on October 10, the surgery began to remove her Sigmoid colon. There was some miscommunication that day... Dianne, Larry and I were in the Family Room for the floor she was aligned to waiting to talk to the doctor after the surgery. This is where the floor nurses told me I could wait since it was very comfy. The surgical waiting was very crowded and the chairs are not comfy at all. Apparently, the staff in the surgical waiting room misunderstood where we were.. and forgot all about the cell phone number they collected from me!! So at about noon, we learned Mom was in recovery and that Dr Gallagher had come out at 11:15 looking for us but was now gone. I spent the next several hours trying to get the doctor paged in every way I knew how...

Meanwhile, they decided Mom would go to 9th floor after recovery, so we packed up her bags and moved to room 901. This was the most wonderful room she has ever been in while hospitalized here in Orlando. And the sad thing is, she doesn't remember being in there. It was a HUGE private room, with a HUGE bathroom, a nice TV with a VCR/DVD player, a murphy bed, a mini fridge, a reclining chair and adjustable room lighting. She moved into the room at about 4:00 (5 hours after surgery ended). For some reason, the doctors decided that immediately after surgery, she should be on a PCA pump for her pain control. [This made no sense to me since she was not going to be awake for hours following the surgery so she would in effect not be getting pain medicine during this time.] Well, Mom woke up in lots of pain. The orderlies tried to tell her to push her pain button, and she told them to, "Shut Up!" She was in and out of consciousness the rest of the night. When she would wake up, she would tell me she needed help getting up so she could go to the bathroom. No matter how many times I told her she didn't have to move to accomplish that, she would try to get out of bed. Also, she never really understood where she was or why she was there. I decided it would be best if I spent the night to make sure she didn't actually make it out of bed in this condition. Gotta love the murphy bed!! I miss that room...

Back tracking a little, at 6pm I did hear from one of the surgeons, Dr Santa Ana (resident with Dr Gallagher). Mom's Sigmoid was all twisted about; there was no doubt that she needed the surgery. They had removed the Sigmoid. She also had an ovarian cyst that got pulled into the twistiness, so they removed her left ovary and the cyst that went with it. They did not feel confident about trying to reconnect her plumbing due to the amount of inflammation in there, so they did a colostomy bag. They won't know if this is temporary or permanent for a couple of months, after she is more healed. They sent all the removed pieces to pathology (skipping ahead to the good news since it took about a week- no cancer!). At that time, Dr Santa Ana said recovery would be 5-12 days in the hospital, and another week or so at home.

The next morning, her Hospitalist (don't get me started on him, or the concept - both are bad) Dr Mazer came in to check on her. Now her potassium was too high. After a week of supplementing it, it was now almost 6.0. So now they had to give her medicines to reduce it! Dr Santa Ana, also came in to check the incision site, etc, and said everything was looking good. She confirmed that the only things removed were the Sigmoid and the ovary.

That whole day once again, Mom would wake up and not really know where she was, but she knew she was in pain. Several times the night before, she would call out for Dianne. [Dianne and I joked that she would get credit for the sleep over, but Mom didn't remember any of this later on.] They tried at on point to get her out of bed, but she fought us too much. I went home at about 2pm. I checked in with her nurses a few times and the rest of the day was more of the same.

This is a good place to stop... going to visit mom now.