Stuck in the Desert

Stan Here:

By now I think people have figured out when I am doing the writing that Deb is not feeling all that well.  A couple of days ago I mentioned that the Bible story about 40 days and 40 nights  in the desert might be worth mentioning.  I thought then we could maybe set it  as some sort of target but now we are at that point.  So I wish I could think of something else as a target but the only thing that comes to mind is 1001 Arabian nights and I am not sure we want to think about that all that much.  The facts are that not much progress has been made in the last week.  Perhaps it might be best to answer some of the questions that people have asked. I will do the best I can with that. Here are some of the questions people have asked.

1.  Have you thought of moving to another hospital where they might know of some procedure of treatment to move this forward?   We have thought of that.  Over the course of time though we have determined that although unusual they have seen similar cases here to what we have. In a small percentage of cases it takes a great deal of time for the intestines to wake up. With the degree of work that Deb has had done over the past year her system is taking a longer period to respond that any of us could have thought of. However they have had similar cases go up to 70 days.  There is nothing out there procedurally that they could be done that they do not have the ability to handle here. Also the logistics of doing something like that would add to the problems of visits and all of the other things that Deb needs to stay in touch with some part of her world. Finally we remain confident in the staff and care here. It is true that we would have preferred in some of the pre surgery meetings that it might be mentioned that in rare cases it takes a great deal of time to get things working we have also found in talking with the staff that cases like this are quite rare.

2. Do they worry about needing to hook things up like she had when she came in?  After all of this that would be a sad day. They do still have a high level of confidence that this will work and they are going to start a number of procedures to again determine why things are taking this long.  Since it has been less that 2 weeks from the last surgery where they found the kink they do not want to risk doing a colonoscopy until they know things are very healed.  They are talking about working with barium again to look once again at what is happening. They refer here to the surgery she had as "taking down an illiostomey" . You can be sure that it would be a huge disappointment to go through all of this and to put it back the way it was.  But so far that is not being talked about. 

3.  How is Deb doing?  This past week has been tough.  She has had to fight some strong nausea this past week and today had to throw up everything that she had tried to consume this past week.  But now she does feel better after that.  Anything that goes in her is not passing much further than the stomach.  For some time she had the NG tube but she hated that thing. She endured the nausea with the hope that they did not have to reinsert that tube and would do about anything to not have to have that again.

4.  How about her spirits?  There was one day last week that I told somebody that I was getting worried her spirit was broken.  They were doing some test with barium and x-ray and she was on  a hard table for 6 hours. This morning there was a barium enema that also was very painful. Most of you guys know that Deb is one of the tougher ladies in the game and prides herself in being able to handle medical stuff without complaining. I must tell you that some of the stuff they have had to do is right up there on the pain scale.  The other element that exist is just simply that being here now 40 days is right at the top of the charts from the mental side. However these past days I think Deb has done well from this aspect.  Many of you have visited (thank you) and your continued love and care for Deb has meant a lot to both of us.  

If you have any other questions I will attempt to answer them.  I think most of the stuff I know is someplace in the above. Seems kind of quiet at home. I have been doing some reading preparing for a class I will be teaching with one of our pastors.  The name of the class is "Swinging Swords, Raging Lords, Great Rewards".  Kind of a screwy title but it should be a good class.  I was kind of hoping Deb would be back to attend the class and keep me in check.  Does not look now like that is going to happen so I will have to do my best to keep it on the mild rather than the wild side.  For now I will tell you that the swinging sword part is a reference to the Biblical story in Genesis 3 of God putting a couple of angels swinging swords at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to prevent Adam and Eve from going back in.  It does seems a little like one of those angels got a little lost and is now hanging out at the door of this doggone hospital room.  We are both kind of anxious for the "great reward" part of this whole deal.  It will come!!! Thanks for staying with us.

Stan