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| June 30, 2006 Hello, everything is going well here. Charlie has used paper and pencil only a couple of times to communicate with me since the doctor made him talk at his appointment. When he gets frustrated that I can't understand him then he will finally write down what he means. Today that hasn't happened once, so his speech is getting better. We haven't had anymore problems with the trach - thank goodness!! Last night Charlie did have a coughing jag that lasted about a half hour, of course in the middle of the night. Good thing we can take naps!! We have to say thank you to Jamie, our visting nurse. We will be losing her next week. Because Charlie can leave the house and go to things like ballgames we can't have a visiting nurse come in. A sign of healing!! The swelling is going down quite well, and Charlie thinks the swelling in his mouth is reducing pretty fast now too. Once that trach comes out we will be hitting the campgrounds!! Well gotta go with Charlie for a walk around the yard. Talk to you later. Thanks for everything!! | ||||||||||||
| July 15, 2006 - Surprise! Finally an update! I wasn't writing because things were going along about the same. The swelling was going down and he was talking more - everyday was getting better and better. Then on Tuesday (7/11/06) I was trying to hook up new printer and I was getting an error that I needed help from Dell for so I was on the phone with them and then with microsoft for more than four hours - Charlie says it was more like six. I wasn't paying much attention to Charlie and he wasn't saying much but he wasn't feeling well and didn't let me know. By the time I realized that things might not be going as well as I thought Charlie was running a temp of 103.5. He also had some blood in his secretions. I called Ann Arbor and talked to the resident on call and he suggested that we go to the emergency room. We decided to drive to Ann Arbor and forgo Mt Pleasant because we have more confidence in U of M. We also had an appointment with Charlie's doctor there on Wednesday so if they were going to admit him we wanted to be there instead of in Mt Pleasant waiting for an ambulance ride down. We left home at 11 pm and I had given Charlie some tylenol before we left so by the time we got to the expressway his fever was gone and he didn't have one again until yesterday (just lowgrade yesterday). We never did find out what the fever was from, could have been a combination of things like his pnemonia and he had been coughing so hard that evening that he was getting sick etc. They ran all sorts of tests and took an x-ray of his lungs (which looked the same as the last one he had done so the pnemonia didn't get worse). Everything came back normal. The otolarengology resident came to the emergency room and ran a scope into Charlie's nose, mouth and lungs and all he saw was some irration from being suctioned. That is where the blood was coming from (he wasn't passing much but more than I had seen before). We got to the hospital at 1:30 am and never saw a doctor until 4:30. By the time they ran tests and we waited for results we didn't get out of the emergency room until a little after 9 am. The resident that saw Charlie in the emergency room let his doctor know he was there so they worked him in for an appointment in the morning (we were scheduled to be there at 3pm). We were on the road home at 10:30 and we slept most of the rest of the day - once we got some food in us. Thank goodness for Greg - he was our driver. I'm not sure how he stayed awake for the ride home - I know that Charlie and I slept. Must be the coffee and pepsi he drank in the morning!! Thanks again Archie!!! So now things are back to where they were. The doctor just checked out Charlie's incision area and looked in his mouth - he said Charlie had been through enough the night before. Now we have an appointment on the 26th to see an oncologist to talk about the chemo treatment, and with speech and swallowing therapist, and with Charlie's doctor. The doctor thinks the swelling is down far enough for the trach to come out but Charlie has so much secretions in his mouth that he has a hard time breathing because of that (every since he had the radiation his saliva has been thick and a lot of it - remember he always walked around with a spit cup before surgery, and because of the swelling in his tongue and it doesn't have much feeling he can't spit right now either - catch 22!!). So he needs to learn to swallow so we can get that out!!! We will be working on that this 2 weeks and capping the trach for short periods daily - will let you know how it goes | ||||||||||||
| July 19, 2006 - We were back in the ER last night as Charlie is still running a temperature. He gets a temp between 5 - 7 pm. It is over 101 so he needed to be seen. The tests that were ran last night that the results come back quickly looked good. We are waiting on a couple tests that will be back tomorrow. There was also a shadow that showed up on his chest x-ray in the right lung - upper right side (it was not there last week when we went to Ann Arbor). I called the doctors office this morning and they were going to look at it. I did not hear back from them but I have to call there tomorrow for the results of the other tests so we will see what they have to say at that time. We have not had any success on capping the trach so I am afraid it won't come out on the 26th - but we have a week so maybe things will get moving. Will write again with the results of the tests tomorrow. God bless you!! | ||||||||||||
| July 21, 2006 - The blood test results came back fine, the sputem test was being cultured so that will not be back until today or Monday. The chest x-ray was fine (shadow is probably his shoulder blade) but from the x-ray they believe Charlie has a cracked rib, from coughing so hard. The last couple of days he has been having to hold his ribs on the right side when he coughs because they hurt so bad so that explains why. Nothing that can be done except hold a pillow while coughing to help with the pain. Charlie is getting around more, he is going out and doing 10 laps around the driveway twice a day (which he figures is a 2 miles) and he is using the breathing machine that you get after surgery to clear your lungs 2-3 times a day. We started him on Aleve for the muscle pain that he is having in his stomach and back from laying around and coughing so much. He says the last 2 days have been his best consecutive days in a long time. I think he wants to start capping his trach and timing it today, atleast that is what he said yesterday. He doesn't seem to have as much secretions coming from his lungs but he still gets a lot of build up of saliva in his mouth which is not helpful when trying to breath through the mouth. It is a start in the right direction though - atleast he is talking about doing it not just me nagging him to try. On Tuesday when we went to the emergency room Charlie said he was tired of being in pain 24-7 and now that we have a handle on it and he is getting up and moving more he is feeling much better! He also told me that he was not seeing much improvement but now I think he is. He looks great, you can hardly tell that he had surgery, especially from a distance - whoever sewed him up did a great job! Once the trach comes out I think he will get better in leaps and bounds! Again thanks for the thoughts and prayers, we can never say thank you enough!! | ||||||||||||
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