Still at the hospital

My poor mom has had quite the week.

Last Monday (7th) she had a procedure called chemo-embolization performed on her liver. Her insurance declined Stanford's radio-embolization procedure so this was plan B. They are basically the same thing - they go into her liver and inject either chemo (for chemo-embolization) or radiation (for radio-embolization). The dr. said that the first 6 hours would be the worst and then she should improve after that. Usually the hospital stay is 1 night.

Tuesday she was still in a lot of pain so they kept her a second night.

Wednesday she seemed to be getting better so they sent her home with pain pills.

Thursday the pain increased probably due to all the hospital drugs wearing off and of course, her dr. was on vacation so my dad talked to the dr. on call and he changed the medicine.

Friday she was still in a lot of pain so they increased the dosage. They kept telling us that pain was to be expected and it should start decreasing.

Saturday we continued with the increased pain meds to see if we could get it under control.

Sunday my dad and I got her to the infusion center for her magnesium transfusions. She gets these everyday and hadn't had any since the hospital on Wednesday so we thought this might be contributing to her pain, weakness, etc. The nurses were really concerned about her because her blood pressure was on 68/54 (remember normal is 120/80) and her heart rate was up. They gave her some fluids and her blood pressure came up but still not normal.

Monday I took her in for another mag infusion. Again her blood pressure was way down and the nurses were really concerned because of the amount of pain she was in and how weak she was. She hadn't eaten all week due to the pain. We had managed to get a little bit of sherbert, oatmeal and chocolate shake in her during the week but not enough to keep her strong. They immediately called her dr. who said that if she wanted to, they could admit her into the hospital and give her stronger meds to help with the pain. She agreed, which only showed me how much she was truly hurting because my mom doesn't like the hospital. So Monday she was admitted.

She is on 3 different pain meds now which have her all loopy but at least she isn't in pain. I have been with her everyday in the hospital to make sure she gets what she needs. She doesn't like to be a "trouble" to anyone so she sometimes won't ask for what she needs plus she is so loopy she doesn't know what she needs at this point.

When the liver is healed enough she should be able to manage the pain with pills and not need to be in the hospital so we are on a wait and see basis. It could be tomorrow when she goes home, or it could be another couple of days.

The "normal" time for the pain is 2-3 days after treatment - we are on day 9! Yikes!

I hope it changes soon! Please keep her in your prayers. She is such a sweetie! She is in pain and all loopy from her meds but she is still so sweet and the nurses just love her.