Nanc,
Your mail said everything I've been wanting to say! Especially to Kathy in
Boise. I just hadn't figured out how to say it. You said it all!!! I get
so tongue tied sometimes!
My thoughts and prayers are with you my friend as you sort out how to best
help your Don...
My nephew Tommy is back in ICU today. The chemo made him barf so bad he got
a tear in his esophagus (sp?) that created a really risky medical situation
(I won't go into the details... you probably have already guessed). They
needed to do a procedure where they sent a camera down his esophagus to see
what the heck was going on in his esophagus and stomach. They had to
transfuse him with 2 pints of blood and 1 of platelets before they could even
risk the procedure as he'd lost so much blood already. But in the end, they
determined the worst was over as the tear had clotted. His numbers are
really low right now so they will keep him in ICU until they are more sure he
is at less risk. Each round of chemo has a new wrinkle to it, it seems. As
awful as it seems, much of what he's going through is the same pattern as the
two previous rounds of chemo. So we worry but don't dispair. We wait to see
what will happen.
I am just glad that I was at the hospital with them when all this was
happening today so I could support Wendy and Tommy as this new page of his
treatment journey was written. I just spoke to Wendy again (it's been about
5 hours since I left the hospital) and she is now ok with what is happening.
The speed at which it all happened was pretty terrifiying.
The real problem was Tommy went from being in a regular room to "we gotta
move him to ICU" in about 15 minutes. Not because he crashed or anything,
but because they realized if they were going to do this procedure, they had
to get him down there to begin monitoring him right away. They just didn't
explain it very well at the start. For Wendy it felt like a set back at
first. Now she recognizes they were just being cautious.
Sometimes I think health professionals don't stop and think about how they
communicate with the patients and their families. Even though most of the
time I think they are really well intended they don't think about how their
words might be taken. I thought I understood what they were doing, but it
was a leap of faith for me to come to that conclusion at the get go. I
didn't know for sure until later on that my ideas about what they were doing
were accurate. ah well...
Tommy is resting pretty comfortably tonight. I will see them first thing in
the morning.
Love, Kathy Q
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