Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Complications

So, when I left the hospital, I was absolutely ecstatic.  I was very happy to be home.  But, by a week later I had to go back to the hospital because of some complications. 

The Week Prior to Hospital Stay #2
       As I mentioned in my earlier posts, my incision had started to open up towards the end of my stay at the hospital.  My surgeon's associate said to clean it with peroxide and it should be fine.  Well, like I was told, I cleaned it with peroxide everyday.  BUT when my Home Health Nurses came  to check up on me, they said to quit doing that because peroxide will destroy healthy cells, therefore preventing any healing.  They told me to just clean it out with saline everyday and cover with gauze.  To give a little background on my home health nurses, the hospital assigned them to come to my house 3 times a week to check on how I was doing and to help me with my new ostomy.  They generally would check my vitals, watch me change the ostomy, and check my incision. 
        During her second visit, my nurse noticed that I had a rather high resting heart rate (130s when it should be between 60-90).  She felt that is was probably just my body reacting to the trauma of the surgery and not to worry too much.  But, she was worried about my incision.  The incision was growing quite quickly.  It was open about 6 inches lengthwise from the bottom(remember it is only an 8 inch incision) and was starting to open at the top of the incision also.  She said to keep an eye on it and call her if I had any concerns.  About a week after leaving the hospital, she checked my incision and was shocked.  It was now open about 2 inches wide plus the 6 inches in length.  She recommended that I go to the emergency room. 

Hospital Stay # 2
        That night, my parents and I went to the ER to hopefully get my incision restitched.  However, when I was getting my vitals checked, they noticed that my resting heart rate was above 150.  Extremely high and dangerous.  They took me to one of the beds and two doctors came to assess my incision and my heart rate.  They looked at the incision and found that it was no way infected, but that there was nothing they could do about restitching it.  It was already over 2 weeks since it was first opened and bacteria could already be living it in and they didn't want to risk creating an infection.  However, they were very concerned about my heart rate.  They had me do a CT scan of my chest to see if there were any clots....they didn't find any.  They then decided to keep me overnight in the Telemetry (heart monitoring) section of the hospital with heart monitors.
         Over the next few days, my heart rate started to go down slowly but surely.  They found that I was dehydrated with low sodium levels and assumed this was making my heart rate so high.  They then began to fill me with fluids with high sodium levels but found another problem: I was starting to get fevers.  They thought that maybe I had an infection in my incision so they started me on antibiotics.  When this didn't prevent my fevers, they assumed that maybe the infection was somewhere else in body or that it was so small in my incision that it couldn't be seen.  To find where the infection was, they decided to do this strange test, I'm not sure what it is called, but it involves taking blood, filling that blood with radioactive particles, then reinserting that blood into your body.  In about two days, they take a CT scan of you to see if any parts of you are glowing.  It was a running joke in my family that I was radioactive after that test...and technically I was (the radioactivity doesn't wear off for about 3 months lol!).  However, when they did this test, they couldn't find any glowing parts indicating an infection.  Luckily, my fevers started to go down, and they assumed that it was because my lack of walking (I'm a pretty lazy person, especially after this surgery).  I was somewhat of a medical mystery because a lot of times they seemed dumbfounded when they couldn't figure out the causes of my complications. 
            As for my incision, I stated earlier that they weren't able to stitch it up because of the risk of an infection.  However, I did see a surgeon who was very thorough in analysing the state of my incison (he stuck his finger and rubbed hard into the incision to determine that it didn't have any pus, let's just say that it hurt, A LOT).  He put one stitch in the middle of it to prevent it from widening.  Unfortunately, the stitch broke a few days later, BUT my incision luckily didn't widen. 
              All in all, I was in the hospital for a total of 7 days.  This makes my total for the summer, so far, 18 days.

Moral of the Story
         So what did I learn from this frustrating experience?  Drink plenty of liquids.  My doctors didn't allow me to use immodium or any medical thickeners of the sort in the first few weeks because they felt it may hinder the healing process, so I lost a lot of liquid.  Because you can't take meds to thicken your stool in the first few days, you will want to eat a lot of thickening foods (potatoes, rice, noodles, white bread, starches, bananas, etc.)  Also, watch your heart rate.  If it gets as high as mine, you will absolutely know that something is wrong.  Every time I stood up I would get out of breath within 5 seconds.  You cannot risk overworking your heart that much.  Your heart rate (at least for me) is a great indicator that you are dehydrated.  You will probably not be thirsty when you are severely dehydrated because when you are dehydrated, your potassium levels are so low that they cannot send messages to your brain saying you need hydrated.  Kind of a vicious circle, huh?

Medical Tests, Medicine, and Devices
  • CT scan- large x-ray that goes all the way around your body to find problems.  Need an IV with iodine contrast to spot this problems
  • Heart monitor- a device that shows your heart rate and rhythms
  • IV- fluid administration
  • Vitals- blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate
  • Antibotics- can't remember which one I was prescribed but it was to fight my suspected infection
  • Tylenol- used to lower my fevers
  • Blood thinner injection- very small shot in the stomach that somewhat stung. Used to prevent any blood clots in my body from forming (blood clots are common after a surgery)
  • Doppler ultrasound- literally an ultrasound on your legs to make sure that you do not have a DVT (deep vein thrombosis).  Used to figure out the reason for my high heart rate
  • Radioactive tagged blood particles test- used to find my infection

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