Back to emergency room (part 2)

Sat Oct 11th By night time, I couldn’t take it anymore and felt like I was again unable to make it through the night. Due to the comments the doctor made from the last one (“if you hadn’t come in you would not have made it through the night”) I was not going to take any chances and I really felt that it was a strong prompting from the Lord to go back. I actually had been being prompted all day but it takes me longer than some to recognize the spirit sometimes. They decided at the E.R. that I was bad enough and dehydrated enough to warrant checking me in again. This time it (the check in) was much more controlled but still not fun. I did feel a little better about being monitored by their equipment. Somewhere through the night I mentioned to the nurse that I had started having a little bit of a hard time emptying my bladder. I had not had any real pain per se, but I had start going to the bathroom a lot more often and when I went it didn’t seem like I was getting as much out. She picked up on that and had them come up and check me out. After a couple trial “bladder emptyings”, they concluded something was wrong and needed to do a catheter sooner than later (even though it was in the middle of the night). It was very miserable (my first one but eventually I end up with several more) and they had a hard time getting it in (won’t ever forget that). Once it was in, they drained over 800 ml of fluid in just a few minutes. So again I realized that the Lord was helping me with another miracle. I don’t know if it would be as “fatal” of an issue but technically if we had not taken care of it, it could have been very bad for me and Julie would never have know what to do at home.

Maybe I shouldn't have gone home?

Fri. Oct. 10th Spent most of the day throwing up and trying to just survive. I couldn’t eat anything so eventually it was just dry heaves but I was going downhill fast. It seemed to be worse as well when I would take the medication for the pain.

Going home from hospital (part 1)

Thurs. Oct 9th Through all this Dr. Te had been working with me to try and get me out of the hospital as soon as I was ready but I think I pushed him to let me go earlier than was prudent. Today they sent me home to try it out. They spent a long time going over everything with Julie and I am so glad she was there because there was so much happening that I would never have remembered anything and she wrote everything she could down and took notes all the time. The most important thing to them was to try and allow me to control my medication as necessary. In other words they wanted me to try and relieve the pain as much as possible but not OD or anything so Julie had to become an expert on several types of pain medications in order for them to let me go home. I thought I was good before with a couple of hydrocodone pills before. They gave me a fentinil patch which is just a patch you put on like trying to quit smoking but it time releases some good drugs (generic morpheine) into you slowly for pain. Works real good for the most part but occasionally the pain really flares up and the patch isn’t enough so they also gave me some generic morphine in liquid form to start with and then we work off it as the pain got less from surgery and everything. Then I had several other pain medication options and about 10 different pills for (it seemed like) everything under the sun.

Temple recommend dilema

Note: not sure of the date exactly but somewhere through here I realized in talking with Josh that my Temple recommend had expired in Aug. I thought that it had expired in Nov so I wasn’t worried but when I realized the mistake, I wondered how we were going to do this. My records were in the Rapid City Ward and I needed to visit with the Bishop here. We called Bishop Hurst from the “hearing ward’ here in St. George and he said he would get working on it.

Getting set up for radiation

Wed Oct 8th Today we started radiation on my lower back. The hospital transported me to the radiation clinic (at the old hospital) and met with Dr. Richards. After some consultation and education for Julie and I, they took me back into a room where they had me lie down on a table (like a CT scan table). They used some high powered targeting laser type devices to paint a target (they called it a tattoo) on my stomach. They said they would use it to target the radiation every time I came in. When they laid me flat on the table to do the tattoo, I guess I had some fluid in my lungs, and when it pushed up against my lungs, I had a panic attack (remembering that feeling from before of suffocating) and sat up panicking twice. We finally found a way that they could fit me in the machine (just barely) if I propped up a little so it didn’t push up against my lungs. It really scared me though, and I learned just how real and scary a “panic attack” can be. We were going to do radiation every weekday for 15 days. They felt that there was a good chance that it could really help me, but they wanted to start right away if it was going help before the wedding.

Chest drain

Tues Oct 7th Dr Woodbury monitored me after the surgery and said everything looked good, but he was still concerned about my need to drain the lung area regularly. He had put a temporary tube in place to drain the heart and lung, but now he talked to us about putting a “semi-permanent” tube into the lung cavity so that we could drain the lung ourselves at home, instead of making multiple trips to the hospital. Later that day, they took me back into surgery and did the procedure. This wasn’t nearly as bad as my earlier surgery, and recovery was much easier. I do remember going down for this one although they did put me out for a while. So now I have a little tube with a cap on it hanging out of the left side of my chest (about 6 inches below the arm pit). It has been working very well, but they did caution that that area was critical to monitor closely because I could not afford to get an infection. Some of my guys from St. George City came to visit me at the hospital. It was great to see them.

Radiation ?

Mon Oct. 6th I spent most of this day recovering from surgery. People were coming in my room all day, testing everything they could think of, but I was still coming out of the drugs and this day is a bit of a blur. I know that Julie was there whenever I needed her, and I really appreciated her for that because I was starting to really need her support, as I realized more and more how bad off I was. We kept reminding the doctors and nurses that the target date was Josh’s wedding and they had to get me better enough for that. Dr. Te decided to have a Dr. Richards come talk to me about possibly doing some radiation to help with the pain in my back. I agreed to that right away. Dr. Richards seemed like a great guy and I found out he is in the Stake Presidency in his stake. Glad to have the Lord’s hand directing this one too.

Checked in to hospital Day 1

Sun Oct 5th Dr. Woodbury called Julie about 4:30 a.m., and told her that the surgery had gone well, and that as soon as the fluid drained, my heart started beating normally again. I spent the morning in ICU, where Josh and Julie both came to visit. Katie was very upset because they would not let her in to see me. Justin was sweet, and stayed with her in the ICU waiting room. When Josh came to visit, I must have looked pretty bad because I have never seen Josh break down and cry until that day. He did, both in the ICU and later, when he was leaving the hospital. Julie told me later that when she saw me in the bed in the ICU, it really scared her. I had no color in my face, and was hooked up to so many wires and monitors she had a hard time finding a place to touch my hand. In fact she said I reminded her of her Grandpa Edwards in his casket at his funeral. I had no idea I was that bad at the time, but have come to realize just how close to crossing over the veil I really was. But the Lord kept me here instead. I do remember the doctor telling me when they were first starting, that they were going to give me something that would help me forget about what they were going to do, and it worked. Julie told me about spending time in ICU (I don’t remember it at all). She also told me that they did one of those trachea things where they stick the big tube down your throat during the surgery so I could breathe, and I don’t remember that at all. She said that when she talked to me after the surgery I was adamant that they did the surgery by going down through my throat, and wouldn’t be convinced otherwise. I don’t even remember it, or talking to her about that (she finds that somewhat humorous actually that I have no recollection of something so traumatic). They moved me out of ICU and into a regular room at about 1:30 pm.