Thursday. . . the day after.

As many of you know we have had a bit of a set back.  On Monday night Doug went to the dentist who is in Covington (where his parents live).  He ended up staying there for the evening because he has been feeling tired, weak and had been vomiting.  The doctor earlier on Monday told him the vomiting was probably due to the high volume of dead tissue at the back of his throat that he has been swallowing.  Doug’s pain was steadily getting worse as well, so he increased the dose of the fentynl patch from 75mcg to 100mcg.

Doug ate some pudding and two glasses of chocolate milk at his parents house that night, switched out the patch from 75 to 100 (the patches get changed every 3 days and his expired on Monday night).  He went to bed as usual and planned on getting up at 6am to get ready for radiation at 7am.  His mom got up shortly after 6 and noticed the lights were not on in his room, so she went to wake him up.  She was not able to rouse him, and ran to get his dad.  Neither of them could wake him, he was unconscious, had white fluid running out of his mouth and was having trouble breathing.  (I am told he sounded like he was gargling) 911 was called and he was admitted to Newton Medical Center.  The intubated him (put him on a respirator) and gave him Narcan to wake him up from the Duragesic (fentynl) patch.  He apparently woke up and then had a violent projectile vomit episode which required them to take the tube out and clean out his throat, re intubate him and knock him out.  They suctioned out everything in the stomach.  He was kept unconscious for the rest of the night and into the next day.  I stayed with him in the ICU on Tuesday night, he would respond to my voice with head nods and hand squeezes occasionally.  The next morning, he had a chest x-ray which came back clean and all his labs look good (his white blood cell count is high, which does indicate infection, but they had him on prophylactic antibiotics), so they took him off the respirator around 12:30.    He was confused about what happened and did not remember the previous day, but the medicine they gave him to knock him out was designed to give him amnesia since it is not a pleasant memory to have.  It appears he feel into a deep sleep on Monday night, vomited in his sleep and then aspirated the vomit.  This in turn caused respiratory distress which landed him in the ICU.

Yesterday evening, the doctor came in and told him he could go to a regular room and go home in the morning, or go home now.  Of course he wanted to go home now, which was not really what I would have wanted, but Doug can be a bit stubborn! 🙂  When we got in the truck to leave the hospital, we moved 5 feet in the parking lot and Doug had a good vomiting spell.  Most of what comes out is phlem like stuff, which is good since you want to get that out of the lungs so it does not fester and become an infection, but concerning as well.  The deal I had to make with him was if he vomited like he was doing before he went into the hospital, I was taking him right back to the hospital and he was not allowed to argue with me.   I did get him home last night and Dean helped me get him into the house.  We got him showered, got his mouth cleaned up, flushed his stomach tube and lubed up his face and lips and put him to bed.  He did have a few more episodes of phlem junk coming out this morning and he lost all the liquid Percocet (pain med) I gave him orally.  So I gave him some more Percocet in the tube and have him resting right now.  In a short bit, his mom and I will cart him up to his doctors to figure out what to do now.

I want to post that of all the hospitals he could have gone to I am so glad he ended up at Newton medical center, the team there was outstanding!  That is coming from a highly critical nurse who demands nothing but the best treatment for her husband! 🙂  Thank you for all your prayers, we both really appreciate everyone!