I have no interest in a really long detailed update, but need to vent.
We’re still not in New York. We’re also not in Delaware right now either. We’re up in Baltimore in a hotel while Sean’s mom is sitting in the ICU at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She had her lower left lung removed. It was supposed to be a simple robotic surgery but it turned into her having to be cut open so a vein could be created to lead to her heart (causing them to have to stop her heart to attach said vein). The 5 hour surgery turned into a 7-8 hour surgery where tensions were running high amongst just about everyone. The next day she had an ‘episode’ that we’ve dubbed a panic attack but I (and a few doctors) believe it was a very mild heart attack. Things were touchy for the first few days but she’s so heavily medicated to help with pain tolerance that she thankfully doesn’t remember very much. They had to give her a heavy blood thinner so a few of her tubes can’t be removed due to a heavy risk of bleeding – that instantly put a 7 day delay on recovery time.
The bad news we got today was the fact that the vein they created for her is too small (rightfully so, everything about her anatomy is too small) and there’s not enough bloodflow to the upper lobe and now she’s at a 50/50 chance of losing her entire left lung and having to go back in for another surgery, where they’ll have to stop her heart again to remove the vein they’d previously attached. My head is running a thousand miles a minute and even though I’m making it a point to stay awake to get some work done – all I want to do is curl into a ball and get some rest because I know that there’s a extremely long road ahead of us and I feel like Sean and I are going to need our strength more than she will just so we can mentally get through it. She’s a tough lady but no matter how strong you are mentally – the physical will catch up to you.
We’re basically playing the next week by ear. She’s getting the Epidural tube taken out on Friday, by then the blood thinners given to her this past Saturday will have filtered themselves out of her system so she’s not at too high of a risk for bleeding out. It’s not the same type of Epidural one would get if they were having a baby, this one is higher up on the back and targeted to her chest cavity for pain relief. I just think she needs to be heavily sedated for the next month (at least). I saw her back today, I was avoiding it for a while but curiosity got the best of me. The poor thing is purple on her left side and the area where they cut her open just about killed me. I’ve seen stiches before but I’ve never seen anything like that. If they actually did need to go back in to remove the upper lobe I just see her being in three times as much pain as she’s already in. If she goes to adjust herself in bed she’s just about screaming in pain.
It kills me when there’s nothing that you can physically do to help someone, and I think that’s pretty much how things are going to go for quite a few months during her recovery. Almost makes me wish I was some kind of pill popping idiot, just so I’d have a stock of something to give to her so she’s numb for the recovery.