As of about half an hour ago, Colleen is now located at White Blossom Care Center, 1990 Fruitdale, San Jose, room 204A. She and her doctors are pretty optimistic that a couple of weeks of intensive physical therapy will get her body back in operation.
I am trying hard to remain optimistic, but not succeeding very well at the moment.
Colleen continues to make measurable progress: she can now move (though just barely) everything but her left knee. She's still too weak to stand, and gets dizzy sitting -- after two weeks in bed that's not surprising. There's no pain from the surgery.
Tomorrow morning she's moving to White Blossom for rehab -- that's the place she was in a couple of months ago. They're close, and have a good physical therapy department. The best in that department is in Vallejo, but something a 2-hour drive away from home is out of the question.
Meanwhile, she's lost a lot of weight and looks fantastic -- healthier than I've seen her in years.
When I saw Colleen this morning she was just being wheeled down to Radiology for one more CAT scan to make sure there wasn't anything they missed on the previous one (and the three MRIs). Barring anything obvious, the best guess is that what's keeping her from walking is the shock to her nervous system, and that she'll recover given a week or two of intensive physical therapy. (In the vicinity of 3 hours/day.)
She's eating solid food as of yesterday (she had a ham sandwitch for
lunch), got a visit from the neurologist at 5pm, and seemed very
optimistic when I saw her last night and this morning. More this evening
or tomorrow when we get the scan results back. Meanwhile they're looking
for a slot at a suitable resort rehab facility.
Just a quick note: Colleen's still in the hospital, but will be moved later this week to a place where she can get a week or two intensive physical therapy. Apparently surgery involves quite a shock to the nervous system, and this long a recovery, though unusual, isn't all that rare. She's recovering, looking healthier than I've seen her in years, and feeling optimistic.
And she's back on people food, which is a huge improvement.
I sang her "The Middle-Sized Bear", and sat for most of an hour just chatting, holding her hand, and nuzzling.
For the next couple of days she'll be in room 2356 at Kaiser Santa Clara.
It was a long, very busy, very productive day. Between talking to a lot
of people at Kaiser, fielding more on the phone, and making an inquiry for
N., I was well past my usual limits for interacting with strangers without
much strain. I seem to be getting a lot better at that. Friends are
still a problem when I don't have much to say; ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cflute
suggested saying "I was just thinking of you".
There was a lot of good, and occasionally deep, conversation in between the musical work. That went really well: Callie, Naomi and I really clicked as a group. The fact that I'm good friends with both of them is part of it, but there's also the fact that our working styles seem to mesh almost perfectly.
As an aside, I'm very proud of Kat for working as our roadie and gofer during the day. She placed the order with a local Chinese joint, and when we found out that they weren't delivering today walked the couple of blocks to fetch it. Colleen was proud, too, when I told her last night.
I believe I've mentioned how big a bite having a spouse in the hospital takes out of one's day. There's also the fact that she isn't available to run errands. I ended up taking yesterday off work, without a bit of hesitation once I realized how much I needed to do.
Colleen seemed a little more chipper yesterday; it's still infuriating that she probably won't be at the con, but at least she's more resigned to it. Plenty of visitors, including Playing Rapunzel (the international guests).
Lots of people over for the Wednesday night open house; that's not unusual before a con. I was a little more social than usual, that's also not unusual before a con, and I've been trying to stay out of the office more recently anyway. Having a laptop out in the living room helps.
Colleen was still unable to walk as of this morning, and her guts still aren't functional. It's beginning to look as though she'll be lucky if she gets to even one day of Consonance.
At this point she is, as she put it, sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm stressed, and going into the con already sleep-deprived. Or was that depraved?
... and I have to spend yet another con without my Cat. Not a happy Bear.
Good thoughts, folks! We can use 'em.
Went in to see Colleen this evening. She looked pale and haggard; she'd thrown up her lunch and still wasn't able to move her toes. I spent much of the time simply holding her hand while she slept.
So her bowels still aren't functioning, and she still can't get out of bed. I'm wondering if this is related to her codeine sensitivity.
Grump.
There was a gorgeous, full rainbow painted across the sky ahead of me as I drove to the hospital to see Colleen, with hints of a secondary bow directly ahead. I took it as a sign of hope.
I found her smiling, finishing off a plate of eggs and sausage, and much more comfortable with the epidural catheter (literally) off her back.
It made me happier than I've been in a long time.
I sang "Ferret Went A'Courtn'" at her request. The rainbow was still there as I drove to work.
The book I've been looking for all weekend turned up on my desk.
Happy Bear.
Colleen is now on clear liquids; she's had a late breakfast and is currently drinking lunch. (Drinking her lunch is a whole lot better than mainlining it; she's not complaining.) They're saying Tuesday or Wednesday for getting sprung.
She's just requested take-out Chinese for her first meal at home.
They've dialed back her epidural again; she still can't move her legs well enough to get out of bed. But she's in a lot less pain now, so reducing the epidural should be ok. She's off the IV fluids now that she can drink again. Yay!
Happy bear.
(added 1:38) She's looking gorgeous, too, in a bright jungle print blouse that she and Marty designed for hospital use. And I played my recording of Riverheart twice - she loved it. (See previous post for audio link.)
Colleen's had rather a tiring afternoon -- I arrived to find her exhausted and hurting after an unsuccessful attempt to get out of bed. Apparently the flow rate on her epidural was still too high, and she can barely move her legs (though she can feel them). This is, however, an improvement over this morning, when she couldn't move them at all.
She does have the nose-tube that was draining her stomach out, and is no longer getting extra oxygen. Not having tubes taped across her face makes her a lot easier to kiss, and on the whole she seems a lot more comfortable.
Her room is looking more and more like a florist's shop, which of course is just the way she likes it. Spring flowers, please, not red roses.
Colleen is looking good, and recovering. She was able to get from the bed to a chair this morning, but the epidural dosage required to control the pain makes her a little too unsteady to walk yet. It may slow down her recovery, too; hopefully they'll be able to drop the dosage tomorrow. She had me bring her walker; it's a lot better than the little two-wheeled folding things they have at the hospital.
Apparently there were two cysts, one on each ovary; 5 and 7 cm. All in all, as of this morning, she'd lost about 7 lbs since her weigh-in before the surgery. Hell of a way to lose weight, though.
She has her cell phone, of course, but no good place to set her laptop where she can read it. So phone will continue to be the medium of choice for connecting to her.
A very long, mostly very boring day, which is exactly what one wants when a family member is going in for surgery. I had the notion that I was relatively calm, but the contrast in mood after I actually heard that things had gone well, and again when I went in to see her, was noticable.
I'm feeling perversely gleeful about having written a parody of "The Owl and the Pussycat" about a couple of my friends. They'll probably kill me.
I was very disappointed about having to go to bed so early, both yesterday and the night before. I needed the time, damnit.
As of about 5 minutes ago, Colleen's out of post-op and ensconced in Room 2354A. Next to her bed are two chairs and a window overlooking the caffeteria two floors below. There is WiFi She will be a happy Cat as soon as I bring over her Eee. Happy bear.
Just a quick note to say that the surgeon came out to tell me that Colleen's surgery was completely successful. She's lost a couple of feet of small intestine, and had a "Swiss cheese" of little hernias consolidated and patched over with a large hunk of biomesh.
Happy bear.
Just had a brief consultation with an OB/GYN surgeon who had been called in to take a look at her ovarian cyst, which is about 10cm (estimating from his hand gestures). So that side goes for sure; I told him that Colleen and I had discussed this, and that she'd prefer that they take out the other one as well because of the downstream risk. It's not as if she's planning to use it again...
Other than that, things are going well. Everything seems straightforward. The surgeon said she'd probably still be here on Monday when we get the pathology report back; I'm guessing she'll be out Monday or Tuesday if her recovery goes well.
11:40 Taking out the ovaries was a slam-dunk; they appear to be done with the bowel resection and working on the hernia repair. So they might even be done early.
After going to bed early and spending a restless night, we got up at 5:30 this morning to get Colleen to the hospital for her surgery. They'll have to put in the epidural when she's a little more sedated; she was pretty stressed and fearful this morning.
Surgery is scheduled to take about 6 hours, starting about now. Luckily, Kaiser has WiFi in the caffeteria. I'll be in touch. (10:30 There's also WiFi in the waiting room. Yay!)
I'm getting a little better about noticing emotions, even if most of them are still negative. Our experience at Kaiser involved quite a lot of frustration because drawing blood from a PICC line has to be done in the infusion clinic, not the lab. Grump.
Some good singing in the evening. People really seem to like pocketnaomi's "A Tribute to the Middle-Aged Bear". That's good;
so so I. They'll make a perfect pairing in concerts.
Many parts of yesterday were intensely frustrating, and I found myself getting stressed, falling apart, and getting depressed over that. I guess SSRIs just raise the baseline a little.
I see that I did notice feeling loved when Colleen snuggled me at 5am. I noticed it falling asleep last night, too, with her back snuggled against mine. But most of the feelings I noticed were negative ones.
So... Colleen's fistula apparently is connected to her intestine. The visiting nurse made a bunch of calls and eventually she got a call back from the surgeon on call who said to come in to see him.
Of course, he didn't say where to come to, or make an appointment so that anyone knew she was coming, or spell out his name so that she knew who to ask for. She simply assumed that we should go to the pre-op clinic, where we sat around for an hour waiting for the receptionist to get back from lunch and tell us we were in the wrong place. It's at that point that Colleen said we were to "call him from anyplace in the hospital." Except that when we got there, they didn't know either. AAAAACK!
I've discovered three things today, none of which I'm particularly happy about.
The first is that I keep apologizing to Colleen, even for things I had nothing to do with, because I'd rather have her annoyed at me for being over-apologetic than frightened, furious, or freaked-out because I'm annoyed or angry.
The second is that I fall apart when I don't have enough information to deal with a situation where I have to interact with people. One consequence of this is that I tend to double- and triple-check my information. Colleen doesn't, and in addition she seems to have real difficulty distinguishing between what she's actually heard and the details her mind has filled in because she was expecting to hear them.
The third is that, antidepressants or not, I can still get depressed about not being able to handle a situation well.
Meanwhile I've missed most of a day of work, and I'm going to miss the rest because I have an appointment at 4pm to have my elbow looked at.
If I'm really lucky I might have some composure back by then.
So,... Colleen's fistula opened up again last night, releasing a trickle of blood and pus from what we think is an abcess. She'd been having severe pain in that area for most of the week, so neither of us was particularly surprised. As with the previous incident, there doesn't seem to be any connection with the intestine anymore, so it's not too worrisome.
I packed it and slapped a new dressing on, then did the same this morning (doing a somewhat better job of taping it so that it won't leak). She'll call Kaiser when she gets up. She needs to do that anyway, because she's nearly out of Percoset. Though the pain and redness were a lot less this morning than they were last night.
One reason for the lack of urgency is that her surgery is scheduled for Thursday morning. Another is that this is the third time it's re-opened, so we know the drill. Note that the Remicade doesn't appear to be helping with this, though it may be having an effect elsewhere.
Note the new tag, colleen-200902. The previous one, colleen-200901, has been retired.
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