a lot more complicated

Stanley is watching tv now, starting to look at little better now that his anti-nausea stuff and the morphine kicked in. Looking at the tv? No, I mean sleeping—that binary state he’s in post-operation.

The surgery took 4.5 hours. He’s got a good strong foot pulse again, and his foot has pinked up again (though he’s still pale in the face). Dr. Gagne was hoping it would be a fairly straightforward procedure where he could just go in a remove the clot or, if the clots were too old, do a short bypass.

But that was not to be. Dr. G said it took quite a while to figure out what was going on because there was so much inflammation and then they saw there were just too much to be able to salvage, so they bypassed the bad stretch of artery which, from every indication, is the length of his calf. So not a short bypass. Too many old clots (which wouldn’t have been old if the endocarditis would’ve been caught during the cardiologist’s checkup ... yes, I’m very angry still). Dr. G. said he managed to not cut much of the muscle to get at stuff and tried to keep it as minimally invasive as he could.

So, the clots are bypassed. Finally. But Stanley won’t be getting out tomorrow—Dr. G. said he thinks maybe Friday. I hope he was just being conservative, but S is having such a rough time of it now (throwing up a lot of blood from when some tube was put in him during general anesthesia or something—and he didn’t want pain meds until the nausea stuff stopped, and it took quite a while to get that ordered ... ) that it wouldn’t surprise me. Whatever—I just want him better.

The waiting room here at Norwalk Hospital is way better than the Bridgeport Hospital waiting room. Free coffee (that pod stuff), located next to the cafeteria (cafe coffee is good, and some of the food, but the choices are extremely limited and nothing but diet stuff to drink—all with that crap aspartame ... ), very comfortable chairs (I managed to fall asleep for an hour!) and the blue coats actually helped people out. I hope I never have to see it again.

He’s had good nurses so far. One pretty strict one who kept trying to get him not to watch the blood draw (he always watches the blood draw) and they’ve managed to do everything through his PICC line so he’s not being stabbed every few hours for more blood. So I’m glad they left the line in, as much as he hated it.

So, the progress report is “so far, so good.” The only problem would be is if the leg pulse is diminished or goes away. I’ll feel better when his face is less pale—hopefully tomorrow. He’ll get to eat breakfast, I think—he hasn’t had anything for almost 24 hours—the last bit was some red jello the tech gave him last night.

Long day. Heading home at around 10:30 or so—it’s not fair to the dog to leave her much longer, though she’s a very good girl.

Springfield, Vermont? I don’t picture any nuclear plants in Vermont ... a weird choice. I voted for Springfield, Michigan, even though I’ve never heard of it.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/10/07 at 05:53 PM
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