Surgery Tomorrow?

I spoke with the ICU surgeon this morning. He thinks they may be able to go in tomorrow (10/11) to begin stitching up her belly. He said that she seems to be draining the fluids fast enough that he will be able to begin mending her wound. They may still wait until Sunday or they may operate on both Saturday and Sunday (or possibly Saturday and Monday).

During her surgery yesterday they inserted a feeding tube through her nose and down into her stomach. However, they were only able to get it to the bottom of the stomach when it needs to go about a foot farther so it reaches into her small intestine. They will bring an X-ray machine into her room later on today that will show them where the tube is as they snake it down the rest of the way. After it is in place they will give her a little bit of food (something like Ensure) to see how she handles it and to see if the intestine leaks. They said that the food they give her must bypass the stomach so that there is no chance of it coming back up through her esophagus and aspirating into her lungs.

Heather has been moving around more. They took her off the sedative she has been taking. As a result she rolled her head around a lot and grimaced while chewing on her air tube. The doctors want to maintain a fine line between Heather being sedated enough that she doesn't thrash around and hurt herself or upset her wounds and being "awake" enough that she can come out of the sedation as soon as possible. Therefore, when the doctors saw the way she has been rolling around, they sedated her more. She is sleeping again. When she was off the sedation, she would respond minimally to me (i.e., She would noticeably blink when I said, "Heather, blink if you can hear me.").

Heather has what looks like a deep gash in her thigh, where they cut her open to take a biopsy of her leg when all the red sores were beginning to form. It looks quite bad, so I asked how they will treat it. They said that the cut isn't as bad as it looks. She was so swollen with fluids when I first saw the cut, that it made it look much worse than it is. The doctors said that when the swelling goes down, the cut will easily heal itself.