Enough is Enough

Jim finally came home last Tuesday after spending 27 days in the hospital. With so many ups and downs, it was finally a relief to be able to leave the hospital. While still weak, he continues to improve after almost 7 days being home. His appetite is coming back and he needs pain meds less and less.  He seems to be getting stronger each day.

He entered the hospital with a tube in his belly and came home with a tube in his back. He has a drain bag still connected to the one abscess near his kidney. He came home with 2 tubes on the left side of his chest for hemo dialysis. He came home with 2 other tubes on the right side of his chest for IV medications and blood draws. He has lost 40 lbs. He is on IV antibiotics until mid-April.  I have put my nursing skills to work once again and give him the infusions nightly.

He has started hemo dialysis at the Belleville Davita center on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Dialysis was something Jim never thought he would have to do. Now he has experienced both PD and Hemo. I must say that PD is so much better. It is so sad and depressing seeing all the people at the clinic needing dialysis to sustain life. Sad....

We hope to finally get back on the right track. It will take time for him to build up his strength but hopefully the transplant will be right around the corner. Let's hope because enough is enough already.

Hope

Jim is still in the hospital. 3 weeks to be exact. While he seemed to be improving, the last 4 days he has been experiencing belly pain again. After having a CT scan done today, it shows 3 abscesses in his belly. One on each of his kidneys and the 3rd in his pelvic area.The plan is to have them drained tomorrow.

We then hope his pain will improve.
We then hope he will be off pain meds.
We then hope he will be back to normal and able to stay awake.
We then hope he will get his appetite back and once again enjoy his food.
We then hope he will be able to come home.
We then hope he will be able to continue hemo dialysis.
We then hope he will get stronger.
We then hope for a transplant.

We will never give up hope....

Good Bye PD Cath

Jim has been in the hospital now for 12 days. While his peritonitis originally was clearing up it has now returned. The culprit they think is now his pd catheter. More tests show there is a fungus growing on the catheter which definitely is the source of the current infection. The only option is to remove it. However, before it can be removed he must have an access for the hemo dialysis which he will have to switch to. However, before either the catheter is removed or the access put in, and because he was on a blood thinners he had to be transfused with blood. That is what happened today.

Tomorrow if his blood is ok, they will put in the access port and hopefully remove the cath. This means he will be able to start hemo immediately. Antibiotics are still being given and hopefully will help ease the pain he is in. For now he is ok with the hemo. This means he will have to go to the dialysis clinic 3 days a week for 4 hours of treatment.  Hopefully it will be only for a short period of time until he is transplant ready.

While this is certainly not the road we thought we would be on, it's here and we are dealing with it. It's especially hard since his February 13th transplant date was so close....

My thoughts....There is nothing worse than seeing someone you love in pain and hurting. We all try our best to make things easier. Sometimes that's never enough. We take each day one day at a time and hope tomorrow will be brighter. I walked down to Children's Hospital one day last week to see my friend Alicia and her beautiful daughter Mya. Seeing so many sick kids and what it is they go through I realized we are not in this alone. So many people have bigger problems and that's just part of life. A life no one deserves. I pray for each one of them too.