Monday surgery

All week she's continued to have fever despite the antibiotics so they did some CT scans of her torso and found something.  There is a fluid collection outside her left lung between the diaphram and lung.  This is an area where you don't get much blood flow and blood flow is what brings the antibiotics to fight the infection.  So they are going to operate on Monday to drain it.  The plan is to make a minor incision in her chest and go in with a camera/fiber optic guided thing that will locate the area and suction it out.  If things end up being different than how they look on the CT scan it's possible they might have to open her up more than that, but hopefuly not.  This will be done in the OR under full anesthesia. 

In a "while we're at it" sort of way, they plan to do 2 other things while she's in the OR.  They will send a camera through her mouth and into the lungs to look around and more fully evaluate their condition.  They also plan to make and incision in he belly and into her stomach and insert a larger feeding tube that way to replace the smaller one she currently has going through her nose and down to her stomach.  The surgeon says she has been losing weight and hasn't been getting enough nutrition, which is limited in amount through the nose tube.  Also she'll need extra nutrition in order to heal from the surgery. 

Of course it make me nervous that she is having this surgery, but I feel relieved that they have found a treatable source for these fevers.  In talking to the attending physician a few days ago he described what they want to see her recovery looking like.  3 areas - one, her lungs need to continue to heal. They have actually been improving already.  The breathing machine settings are as good as they can get right now, pretty much (which was news to me).  But they need to remove the fluid in her body also.  That's the second thing.  They talk about her lungs being "stiff".  This is at least partly in reference to this fluid in her chest that is basically pushing in on her lungs between her ribs and lungs.  This limits how deep a breath you can take and makes it harder to breathe.  They can remove fluid through a diuretic, but they don't want to do that while she has the fever and high white blood cell count.  The third thing is physcial therapy to build her strength.  They'd like her to be less sedated and start PT.  The fever/infection is blocking the second two things.  It's nice for me to at least see a path to recovery.  Surgery, stability/lack of fever, reduced fluid, reduced sedation, physical therapy and increased strength.  She still has infection in her lungs, and the surgery to remove fluid/puss outside her lungs may not really help the infection inside her lungs, but the increased nutrition will help her body be able to fight infection and heal in general, and having one area of infection to fight instead of 2 should be better.  They don't have a time scheduled for the surgery, they will just do it whenever they can.  -Willem

Comments

[Moses Choi]

I pray for Sandra and her family. Thank you for update.
Moses

[Eowyn]

Thinking of you every day. Continuing to send loving thoughts to each of you.
Love, Eowyn
XOXO