A Little Bump

So I'm not so good at posting when mom is doing great.  She has been doing so great!  This past week she did a long outing to doctors and other errands on Monday, she did a long outing on Wednesday evening, did the parade on Thursday morning, and went to dinner and a movie with friends on Saturday afternoon.  She has been moving a lot, eating well and generally feeling really good.  She has been doing great managing pain and taking her meds.  I will do a better job of updating everyone on the mundane, like when she is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing and more!

Unfortunately, my post today is to update you on a little bump she had yesterday.  Mom was about to leave for her movie and had a little bit of moisture in her bandage.  By the time the movie was over and she finished up dinner, it became a drip.  Fortunately she felt ok, but when she got home, I immediately saw that it was another infection.  I called the surgeons office and they told us to go back down to Salt Lake City to the same hospital and go to the ER.  Mom felt a lot of anxiety about having to possibly open the wound, yet again, so I encouraged her to take a lot of her pain meds to help with that.  I figured the worst case scenario is that she would be sleepy!  We drove down at 8pm last night and checked in.  We had to go through the ER system, which took a bit of time.  The ER doc finally came in and immediately said - yep infection, I'll call your surgeon personally.  We waited a bit longer and eventually, one of the surgeons residents came specifically to see mom.  She unfortunately determined that mom would need to be reopened and cleaned out.  They did some local pain killing and gave her a very strong anxiety med to help with the procedure.  They determined that it wasn't very bad and good that we caught it so early.  They were able to clean it out and pack it without too much discomfort for mom.  We were able to leave late last night and we were home by 1am.  

The cleaning/changing of the dressing is definitely my least favorite thing so far. We both got through the change this morning ok.  We will go back to the surgeon Monday afternoon to get it closed up - again.  And hopefully for the last time!

Monday is busy!  We will be visiting with the surgeon locally to talk about the port cath placement in the morning.  We also will need to schedule a CT scan for as soon this week as possible so that can be done before they actually place the port, which I'm guessing will be either Tuesday or Wednesday (but I don't really know).  The port needs one full week before she can start chemo, so I think the doc is anxious to get that going soon.

Please pray for mom as she has quite some outings tomorrow and without a doubt some discomfort with moving around with her open(ish) wound.  Pray that they will be able to close it again tomorrow afternoon, rather than putting in another wound vac.  Pray especially for mom's anxiety about any procedures she will have, that seems to be one of her biggest hurdles right now. 

Thank you to Elaine and Anne Rene who were able to come spend the afternoon with mom, take care of her, entertain her, feed her and give me a break for a few hours to spend with my family.  What a blessing all of you people are to us!  

I'll let you know what happens tomorrow evening from the day.  Prayers all day!