You're so vain, I bet you think this Awkward Pose is about you.
"So, you're going to be writing this blog for another five years?"
I swear, my heart can't take these roller coasters. I'll be the next one in the ICU.
Recovery from a hepatectomy is no small feat. Between the phrenetic phrenic antagonization (see what I did there?) to the surgical pain, managing her symptoms over a several-hour period became a pharmacological pain in the ass: the epidural worked, but not for the neck pain. The epidural came out, but the roxicodone didn't work well enough. She couldn't be discharged without the ability to only take meds PO (orally). Some things made her lethargic, other things didn't hit the discomfort at all.
Ugh, SOMEONE is the mayor of Boring Town.
Have you heard of ICU psychosis? It's a real thing (and really not limited to intensive care). When someone loses an excessive amount of sleep, doesn't know if it's 07:00 or 19:00, and is coming out of the trauma of surgery, they can go a little nuts. Often, that's why patients are so emotional between 2-3 days post-op.
Sharon didn't start banging her head against the wall or seeing visions of antelopes (I don't think, anyway), but the stress of ICU and med/surg weighed on her.
Not to mention the fact that she had MAJOR surgery. Did you know she had MAJOR SURGERY?
(She's going to hit me when she reads this.)
So imagine how happy I felt when I walked into her room yesterday morning, and found this sight:
Any hospital food is good hospital food after a week.
That, my internet friends, is the sight of a 70 year-old post-resection eating the first solid(ish) meal in nearly a week.
"This orange juice is the best thing I've ever put in my mouth."
"And let's face it, you've put a lot of things in your mouth."
The Speed Racer is improving well, which leads me to this morning's phone call.
"So, you're going to be writing this blog for another five years?"
"....What was the pathology report?"
"Good. 95% of the tumor had been killed from the radioembolization. The margins are clear. They got the whole thing."
I'm silent. If I had one of those phone cables, the spiral kind, I would have been anxiously twisting it around my fingers. We've had so many moments of hope, then trauma, then reprieve, then more sadness. This could be the end of it all, I thought.
"So...we need a new title."
Today we walk to the window. Tomorrow, we walk to POLAND! Wait.
Mommles should be heading home tomorrow, which is fabulous, because I'm running out of funny looks for The Old Man.
The Old Guy has no time for blogging.
It will be so nice when this six month ordeal with cholangiocarcinoma is way past us. Then, I'll just have to blog about nursing school. I hope.
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