At 5am enough was enough.. I called the nurse back in and more or less demanded that she install another IV and give her a dose of Morphine to get some sort of relief from the pain and hopefully some sleep. After that was finished she was able to sleep from 5am - 8am but once again the new nurse that came on shift at 7am found us both asleep and decided not to disturb her sleep when it was time for her dose of Vicodin. So it goes without saying that when she woke up at 8am and she was an hour and a half over due for her pain meds she was miserable. The new nurse administered the pain medication at 8:30am and we spent a lot of time with her explaining the abdominal situation and urgency to get it resolved. The doctor was notified and he requested they to an abdominal x-ray to check for any blockages which they refer to as an "Ileus."
At 10am she had finally gotten some relief from the "Late" dose of the pain medication and an x-ray tech came in with a x-ray machine that might as well have been called a TORTURE DEVICE. She explained that the x-ray must be taken while she was lying flat on her back and a metal reflective plate had to be in place under the area in question. Since the surgery she has not been able to lay entirely flat even on a soft mattress and now they were asking her to lay entirely flat on a soft mattress with a 24" X 24" flat piece of steel directly on her spine!! We both questioned the technique and whether the tech had any idea as to the type of surgery she had or the hardware that was now installed just under the skin where they were asking her to lay. She assured us that it has been done before and she could either do it this way or go down to the x-ray room downstairs and lay on a flat steel table. I have to be honest, I almost got nauseous when she put the plate on the mattress and Ali tried to lay down on it. It was extremely painful for Ali and they had to have her do it twice. Once with the plate low on her back to see the lower abdominal area and then again with the plate further up her spine for the upper abdominal area. It was pure TORTURE!
In addition the pain management doctor came in to discuss the level of discomfort and the need for a stronger pain medication. They are switching her over to a medication called "Roxy-something" on her next dose and we'll see how she does with that.
Jerry, Dr. Marco's PA came in this morning to check on her and discussed the abdominal issues as well as the pain management. It seems that the abdominal issues are either an "ileus" that is clearing itself up or and early "ileus" that they can hopefully get resolved today. He's not too worried about the situation since she is having bowel movements but it is something they want to get resolved for her comfort. I have to say that I, as well as Ali, really like Jerry. He's a great guy, very knowledgable, and he's personable. They are also going to get her hooked back up to an IV to help with the hydration because she just can't drink enough to stay hydrated when her belly feels so full of gas.
While Jerry was in, he remove the bandages from her incision to take a look and I took the following pictures. He was very pleased with the overall look of her back and, because there was no leaking present, decided that she no longer needed to keep it covered.
I really like this one. It was taken from straight above with
Ali lying on her side and shows the improvement to the hump area.
Hopefully I'll have a better update this afternoon and we'll see some sort of relief from the abdominal discomfort.
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