When we went to the ER on Monday we were hoping to spend perhaps 3 hours getting an infusion. But as with Gilligan’s Island, things didn’t go quite to plan.
It took several infusions to get the electrolytes back in balance. Then on Tuesday, despite the balance being restored, white blood cell counts were climbing. By late afternoon, Penny was feeling pretty bad and suffering from some confusion. (At one point she asked me to help with her wings since the both wanted to be open.) And often her sentences trailed off before completing.
A number of tests, a CT scan, and an ultrasound were done looking for a possible infection. But none was found.
By Wednesday, things had improved quite a bit. Penny’s first words on Wednesday morning were “I think I was a little confused yesterday.” (I confirmed that this was indeed correct.). Conversations were much more coherent throughout the day, and by afternoon she was asking to go home.
It was decided to stay one more night to give her another day of IV antibiotics and to monitor things. In the night she had a bought of nausea, but by morning things were looking better, and she was able to go home Thursday afternoon. Some of the cultures had not yet fully resulted, but the doctors agreed that I could monitor things at home as well as they could in the hospital while we wait for those. So far they haven’t called us back in, so it seems to have been a good choice.
I would have posted about this sooner, but the PostHope site was down for a couple days. The delay allows me to say a bit about the first couple days at home.
It’s been good to be home, but she’s weak and has been dealing with a fair amount of nausea. It seems like each time she is hospitalized, she is weaker when she returns. We are hoping some of her strength will return as she gets more activity at home.
Nutrition is an ongoing issue, and likely related to the electrolyte imbalances. The plan is to modify the eating and tube feed regimen a bit, but we really haven’t started that yet because she hasn’t felt well enough to want to try the new tube feeding formula. Also, there has been quite a bit of pain and discomfort at the tube site. We don’t know what is causing this, but we are glad it is not associated with leaking that was so problematic a couple weeks ago. We are hoping this means that things have healed up well at the tube site.
Monday blood will be drawn to see how the white blood cell counts and electrolytes are doing.