If anyone had told me, last week, that the following eight days would be such a roller coaster, I would have taken a pass. Instead, I went through a very tough couple of days, playing nursemaid to Mark after his eye surgery on Wednesday 17th June.
I struggled to keep up with his eye meds, putting the erythromycin on his eyelid stitches and the drops in his eyes, with me tottering around holding on the bed and then trying not to be leaning on him while I was doing the drops. If you'd been a fly on the wall it would have been funny, I can look back and seethat now. At the time, it was extremely difficult.
Then came Saturday morning. I'd let the dogs out around 5am (they are still on Mark's work schedule and he's been retired since January!) and then gone back to bed after feeding them and putting fresh water down. I woke up a couple of hours later to the dogs whining again, so got up to let them out again ... and found they were whining at Mark who was collapsed on the floor in the hallway bathroom, having been puking and basically passed out. When I went to flush the toilet, it looked like somebody had emptied coffee grounds in there. I've seen plenty of vomit in my life, and had never seen anything like it. I googled it really quickly and it said it was internal bleeding so I told him, "we've got to get you to the ER". I hosed him off on my shower seat then got him dried and dressed, and thankfully, Jel was just out of the gate and leaving for work so she came back, and she helped him out to my car, with him actually using my walker for support.
I got him to Hillcrest, and they immediately took him back immediately, into a room and got him on IV meds and fluids. The staff were brilliant, the doctor ordered a CT scan and then said he was going to transfer Mark to Memorial as he needed an endoscopy to see what was going on.
I left around 2pm to head down to Belton to take care of the goats and chickens, and was on my way back and called Hillcrest to find that he'd been discharged but was still en route to Memorial, so I headed to Memorial. When I got there, I needed valet parking but they don't have it on weekends, so I gave the security guard Mark's eye meds from home, and said I'd be back the next day (not realising that there'd be no valet parking then either, as they don't have it on weekends).
Apparently (which I didn't find out until the next day), he was admitted to Memorial at 7.09pm and promptly had projectile vomiting, scoring a record for distance and the height it reached on the wall ... with the nursing staff still talking about it when he was leaving! Because of that, and again it was the coffee ground looking, which is blood, they gave him 2 units of blood and did an emergency endoscopy at 1am, cauterizing 3 wounds, apparently one was an ulcer and 2 were vascular bleeds. They then clipped them, to ensure they had a second level of sealing.
Unfortunately, despite fluids, and the transfusion, his haemoglobin started dropping again, so he had another transfusion, and they kept him on fluids only just in case they needed to do another endoscopy. Thankfully, his haemoglobin did stay stable after that second transfusion, although it didn't really improve, so - right up until the day they discharged him - they weren't sure if he was going to need another surgery to make sure everything was ok, or not.
Meanwhile, Jel and Samantha helped me a couple of days with Sunshine and Maisie at home, and Dylan and Lily took care of the chickens, and Solomon and Max for me. Without them, I'd probably never have managed to do everything I needed to. My lack of mobility makes so much of what I do difficult without other people helping me with aspects of what I need to do. Opening the gate for the boys, opening their pen because I can't get my car close enough to be able to go down the car door to get the pen door; getting into the pens to get food and water bowls ... because the ground is uneven so I'm having to hold on to something and cannot pick them up; until you can't do things that you used to, it's hard to understand. It sounds like nothing and yet it's so much.
The good thing is that I brought him home yesterday, and he's doing ok. A bit doddery getting around, but def on the mend. I am very thankful for all the prayers, and all the help from everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment