Status Report on Marie Houghtaling::
Yesterday, September 2nd, 2008, Marie had elective surgery to reverse the colostomy that she received in her emergency surgery on May 27th. We had not been expecting her surgeon to do this until 5 or 6 months after the first surgery, which would have meant in October or November. But although Marie’s recover from that first surgery (as well as her hip-replacement surgery on May 20th) seemed (to me) to go slowly enough that I was concerned about it, she “snapped out of it” in the last 2 or 3 weeks or so, and so the surgeon decided to go ahead with the reversal operation yesterday. (Another possible reason was that she was continuing to lose weight slowly, although her appetite had returned. So as long as she had this colostomy, which bypassed part of the intestines, it could mean that the food wasn’t in her body long enough to provide her with much nutrition. This is my own idea, the surgeon did not express that concept to me!)
Anyhow, Marie has done extremely well thus far after this third surgery in 3 1/2 months. She said she didn’t sleep all that well last night – the first night after surgery – but then, she doesn’t sleep all that well at home, either, so I wasn’t particularly concerned about that.
She got up this morning (only 1st day after the surgery) and used a walker to walk to a chair in her hospital room, where she sat for several hours. Then again using the walker to go back to bed. They’ll repeat that process again tomorrow. She is managing her pain extremely well. They gave her one of those medical thingys – you have pain, you push a button and get a very small shot of pain medication injected into her bloodstream. She is allowed to push it every 5 minutes or more, and doesn’t use it all that much.
She still has a tube in her nose, which continues to evacuate her stomach. They are listening (multiple times each day) to her abdomen with a stethoscope, waiting to hear the sounds of the bowels starting to function again, but it could be another 2 or 3 days. Until then, the nose tube stays in.
The surgeon had hoped that he would be able to reverse the colostomy through the stoma (hole in her abdomen), but he had warned us ahead of time that whether or not he could use that approach would depend on what he found when he peeked inside her. I guess whatever he say wasn’t as good as it could have been, because he ended up giving her another abdominal incision, so he could go in and fix her up.
Because he had to make a new incision, instead of just going in through the existing hole (the stoma), Marie’s recovery will be slower than it would otherwise have been. Originally, the surgeon told us she would be in the hospital 3 to 5 days. But when he came to the surgical waiting room to “report” to me yesterday after her 4-hour surgery, he told me that because he DID have to make the additional incision, we should plan on 5 days to a week in the hospital before she can return home.
Her spirits are up, she is naturally weak but enthusiastic about what lies ahead of her. This morning, family-friend Tracy Whitt was there visiting her, and so I took this photo of them
Yesterday, September 2nd, 2008, Marie had elective surgery to reverse the colostomy that she received in her emergency surgery on May 27th. We had not been expecting her surgeon to do this until 5 or 6 months after the first surgery, which would have meant in October or November. But although Marie’s recover from that first surgery (as well as her hip-replacement surgery on May 20th) seemed (to me) to go slowly enough that I was concerned about it, she “snapped out of it” in the last 2 or 3 weeks or so, and so the surgeon decided to go ahead with the reversal operation yesterday. (Another possible reason was that she was continuing to lose weight slowly, although her appetite had returned. So as long as she had this colostomy, which bypassed part of the intestines, it could mean that the food wasn’t in her body long enough to provide her with much nutrition. This is my own idea, the surgeon did not express that concept to me!)
Anyhow, Marie has done extremely well thus far after this third surgery in 3 1/2 months. She said she didn’t sleep all that well last night – the first night after surgery – but then, she doesn’t sleep all that well at home, either, so I wasn’t particularly concerned about that.
She got up this morning (only 1st day after the surgery) and used a walker to walk to a chair in her hospital room, where she sat for several hours. Then again using the walker to go back to bed. They’ll repeat that process again tomorrow. She is managing her pain extremely well. They gave her one of those medical thingys – you have pain, you push a button and get a very small shot of pain medication injected into her bloodstream. She is allowed to push it every 5 minutes or more, and doesn’t use it all that much.
She still has a tube in her nose, which continues to evacuate her stomach. They are listening (multiple times each day) to her abdomen with a stethoscope, waiting to hear the sounds of the bowels starting to function again, but it could be another 2 or 3 days. Until then, the nose tube stays in.
The surgeon had hoped that he would be able to reverse the colostomy through the stoma (hole in her abdomen), but he had warned us ahead of time that whether or not he could use that approach would depend on what he found when he peeked inside her. I guess whatever he say wasn’t as good as it could have been, because he ended up giving her another abdominal incision, so he could go in and fix her up.
Because he had to make a new incision, instead of just going in through the existing hole (the stoma), Marie’s recovery will be slower than it would otherwise have been. Originally, the surgeon told us she would be in the hospital 3 to 5 days. But when he came to the surgical waiting room to “report” to me yesterday after her 4-hour surgery, he told me that because he DID have to make the additional incision, we should plan on 5 days to a week in the hospital before she can return home.
Her spirits are up, she is naturally weak but enthusiastic about what lies ahead of her. This morning, family-friend Tracy Whitt was there visiting her, and so I took this photo of them
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