My Dad
So here's the story on my dad. He had an emergency appen..omy on Monday evening. He called all of the kids from the gurney (sp?) right before going into surgery. While he was unconscious post-op my sister learned from the surgeon that when he came in to the doctor's office earlier in the day for abdominal pain, they had done a CAT scan, which is how they found the appendicitis... and gallstones... and a blood clot. Way to go Dad for "forgetting" to mention those!
So my sister called my other sister, who called me and let me know what was going .. talking to both of them, I decided to fly down the next morning. So I bought my ticket around midnight, got to the airport around 430am to park in the economy lot and wait in the long security line in order to fly out on the first flight at 6am.
I went straight to the hospital and stayed with my Dad for the next 8-9 hours each day, primarily by myself, although his fiancé and my sister were there some of the time too. My Family had a list of questions for me to lay on the emergency surgeon (a hot Greek doctor, sadly, married) and the vascular surgeon.
On the second day of supervising my Pop I got through all the questions with the surgeons:
The gallstones are not immediately causing him any issues; therefore we can leave them alone for now.
The appendicitis was very serious, and was gangrene (dead tissue, it looks green and white and black in the pics- the hot Greek doctor thought his appendix so freakishly disgusting that he took pictures and marveled over it with colleagues). They said it was less than 24 hours from bursting, and was in very bad shape. They also said that my Dad must have an incredibly high pain tolerance in order to have survived that long at home with an appendicitis so advanced. Surgery was successful, but the tissue around the area wasn't the greatest and the doctor wasn't able to close the site, and a drain was left in.
Finally, the blood clot, which was thought very serious and scary at first has turned out to be in his artery, not his vein. This means that it is basically trapped in his leg indefinitely and is at no risk to go to his heart or brain or anything like that because arteries carry blood away from the heart, veins carry it to the heart... So, if something bad was happening with the clot there would be a physical manifestation of symptoms, primarily discoloration in his feet (whiteness, blue-ing, etc) and then the matter would be much more urgent. In the meantime, the clot will be monitored as an outpatient.
Post-op my dad had a really hard time and they were pumping him up with ALOT of antibiotics, plus IV fluids and misc painkillers- adavan, vicodin, valium... they tried all kinds of stuff. He also had the joy of a catheter, leg massager things to prevent blood clots and hourly visits from the respitory therapist to make him huff and puff into a tube to prevent pneumonia.
He was in the hospital almost 5 days ( standard appen..omies are supposed to be in and out within 24 hours to give you perspective, according to my Dad's docs.) and I was with him basically all day each day until dinner, helping him to the bathroom, or to walk around the nurse's station, per the doctor's orders, asking the nurse's for help, or asking questions or notifying them of this machine or that machine that was going off and hadn't been taken care of (my dad was seriously neglected when I wasn't there to help... he paged the nurse in the night 4 times to help him with the leg wraps, and they never came, they refused him pain medication, and his roommate Sudafed, we praised the good nurses but the rest got ratted out to the nurse supervisor. I was PISSED about the pain med thing. HE JUST HAD SURGERY!)
Here is me getting my dad his pain medication at the nurse's station:
So my sister called my other sister, who called me and let me know what was going .. talking to both of them, I decided to fly down the next morning. So I bought my ticket around midnight, got to the airport around 430am to park in the economy lot and wait in the long security line in order to fly out on the first flight at 6am.
I went straight to the hospital and stayed with my Dad for the next 8-9 hours each day, primarily by myself, although his fiancé and my sister were there some of the time too. My Family had a list of questions for me to lay on the emergency surgeon (a hot Greek doctor, sadly, married) and the vascular surgeon.
On the second day of supervising my Pop I got through all the questions with the surgeons:
The gallstones are not immediately causing him any issues; therefore we can leave them alone for now.
The appendicitis was very serious, and was gangrene (dead tissue, it looks green and white and black in the pics- the hot Greek doctor thought his appendix so freakishly disgusting that he took pictures and marveled over it with colleagues). They said it was less than 24 hours from bursting, and was in very bad shape. They also said that my Dad must have an incredibly high pain tolerance in order to have survived that long at home with an appendicitis so advanced. Surgery was successful, but the tissue around the area wasn't the greatest and the doctor wasn't able to close the site, and a drain was left in.
Finally, the blood clot, which was thought very serious and scary at first has turned out to be in his artery, not his vein. This means that it is basically trapped in his leg indefinitely and is at no risk to go to his heart or brain or anything like that because arteries carry blood away from the heart, veins carry it to the heart... So, if something bad was happening with the clot there would be a physical manifestation of symptoms, primarily discoloration in his feet (whiteness, blue-ing, etc) and then the matter would be much more urgent. In the meantime, the clot will be monitored as an outpatient.
Post-op my dad had a really hard time and they were pumping him up with ALOT of antibiotics, plus IV fluids and misc painkillers- adavan, vicodin, valium... they tried all kinds of stuff. He also had the joy of a catheter, leg massager things to prevent blood clots and hourly visits from the respitory therapist to make him huff and puff into a tube to prevent pneumonia.
He was in the hospital almost 5 days ( standard appen..omies are supposed to be in and out within 24 hours to give you perspective, according to my Dad's docs.) and I was with him basically all day each day until dinner, helping him to the bathroom, or to walk around the nurse's station, per the doctor's orders, asking the nurse's for help, or asking questions or notifying them of this machine or that machine that was going off and hadn't been taken care of (my dad was seriously neglected when I wasn't there to help... he paged the nurse in the night 4 times to help him with the leg wraps, and they never came, they refused him pain medication, and his roommate Sudafed, we praised the good nurses but the rest got ratted out to the nurse supervisor. I was PISSED about the pain med thing. HE JUST HAD SURGERY!)
Here is me getting my dad his pain medication at the nurse's station:
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Also, my dad was much relieved to find that his surgeon was a 3rd generation USC grad, so he knew he was definitely safe in their hands. LOL
I surprisingly got to check him out after lunch at the end of the week and babysit him from home, which allowed me to be able to trot out the Canyon High School V. Villa Park football game,
where we whuped 'em good, and dinner with my favorite ladies at Tia Juana's in Irvine the next day.
My Dad is at home, doing better, and hopefully will not be having issues with the fires burning 3 blocks from his house, although he and my sister did start packing some items just in case. (Deep Sigh) So not the good time for fire season...
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