Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Not quite 6 months

Well, we didn't make it 6 months. Monday Ben had a doctor's appointment to go over the results from a CT scan. He'd been having some pains in his side off & on and the spot where his gallbladder was removed was growing.

We had been working since August to get this looked at, but with my new job, that meant new health insurance & we had to go through all of the approvals again. And we weren't too concerned about the bump. So it took until now to get it looked at.

On Sunday the pain started to be pretty constant. So it was a good thing that he had an appointment the next day.

The doctor looked at the CT & checked his belly. Due to the amount of pain he was in & where it was located, they were concerned about appendicitis. So they sent him over to the emergency room to get another CT scan.

We are in the ER enough that the staff remembers us! One of the lab techs remembered us & was showing us his new tattoo of his son's baby foot. It's just wrong that we are recognized.

After about 7 1/2 hours in the ER, they came into to tell us that it was not appendicitis and that they were discharging him with pain medicine. If the pain persisted, we were to go see his PCP. Of course, we were not happy about this as you can imagine. The pain had been constant since Sunday & was getting worse in intensity. So of course, it was not going to go away. And we did not want a repeat of his gallbladder surgery where he was discharged from the ER & the next day he was taken straight from the dr office & admitted to the hospital to have surgery.

We told the nurse that it was not acceptable & she talked to the ER doctor & his PCP. They decided to admit him. So he was taken upstairs at about 10:30 pm for "observation".

We found out around lunch time yesterday that the pain is most likely from an incisional hernia from the gallbladder surgery 11 months ago. But since there is no intestinal strangulation or obstruction, there is no need for immediate surgery. Even though there is significant pain, that's not enough reason for surgery.

Before releasing him, they needed to be sure that he could eat food. So we ordered a yummy lunch of noodles & mashed potatoes. After eating about 15 noodles, he got pasty white & nauseous. So they pumped hm full of anti-nausea medicine. But wanted to "wait & see" how he felt later. This time before dinner they drugged him up to make him eat.

Well, that all went well. So he should have been released last night or this morning. Well, it is 5:00 pm & we are still here. The surgeon already came in to see us around 1:00 & we have an appointment scheduled with him for Monday to discuss surgery. Now all we have to wait for is his PCP to sign the docs to release him. And he is taking his sweet ass time...

1 comment:

ellen said...

At least you have time to blog while you are waiting, waiting, and waiting some more.

I am glad that Ben is ok and the surgery, although not quite soon enough, will get done and the hernia will be taken care of.