Finally Home

Finally home after a long day there. Her blood work was pretty good. But, she has an ear infection and other infections going on in her sinuses and elsewhere.

So, she is now on two new antibiotics.

They are going to schedule a CT scan of her head and most likely will be setting up an appointment with an Ear, Nose and Throat Doctor that has experience in dealing with cancer patients like her. They went ahead and did the IVIG infusion as that may help her weakened immune system deal with the problem.

In a month we go back and do the lab, doc, IVIG deal again. That is probably going to be on the docket each month for the next several months. Everything else is on hold as they think she is relatively stable cancer wise.

Where We Stand Tonight

The good news is that it is not pneumonia.

The bad news is that it has been declared a "viral infection of the nose" and is slamming her as bad, if not worse, than pneumonia. She is very out of it due to the meds they are having to give her as well as the fevers she keeps having. Each time one breaks she has an hour or so before it comes back with a vengeance. At one point this afternoon she hit 103 which aborted their plans to give her another blood transfusion. She is having massive coughing fits, episodes of laryngitis, and is throwing up from time to time due to the infection.

She is also back on oxygen as her saturation level slid to 86 late yesterday meaning that after being ten days free of the oxygen tanks and equipment she is almost back to where she started two years ago next month when the pnuemenitis set in on her.

Needless to say she is not happy. There is no doubt that she is worse tonight so it is not a surprise that they have officially reset her discharge target date to Friday. I don't think that is realistic either as a lot of things have to happen just right for that to occur because there are multiple bad things going on right now. I really don't think she will be home until sometime next week. At the rate things are going, it would not surprise me if they moved her to ICU. Considering how things are going, I am a bit surprised that decision has not already been made.

Sandi Extends Her Stay

Sandi is going to be in the hospital longer than thought yesterday as she is not doing well. Her cough and congestion issue is worse and she is running about five degrees of fever. She had another round of oral antibiotics this morning and will get another tonight. She is very tired and very upset because she is feeling worse and worse. Things were made worse this afternoon when the nurses refused to give her the insulin she needs and she started throwing up. That lit a fire under folks and suddenly they could give her what she needed.

As it stands right now, more tests are being done. This may include a ct scan of her sinus cavities as they chase whatever is happening and try to get ahead of it. They most likely will do that ct scan sometime tomorrow.

She has been told not to expect to go home before Tuesday and to go then would take a major miracle. She would settle for a very minor miracle right now.

CT Scans

Yesterday evening Sandi had three CT Scans--one of the left leg, one of the left hip, and one of her belly.  The results came in around midnight and were not good. Because of those scans she will have additional CT Scans today with biopsies.

Based on what little she has been told at this point, in all likelihood the cancer has returned with a vengeance. Again. 

Scott and I are headed down to the hospital and I will update when I know more.

Day 6--Sandi Hospitalized

Spent the day with her and just got home. There has been absolutely no change at all. The only plan right now is to have her undergo a CT scan for her entire leg so they can look for pockets of infection.

Sunday Night Sandi Update

The good news is her team, The Patriots, won the game tonight.

The bad news, as some on Facebook already know, is that the cocktail of three antibiotics is not working. Her leg is simply not getting better. It looks like they will be adding a wound care specialist as well as a physical therapy person to her medical team. There may be more tests as well. At this point tonight, plans for her coming home by midweek have been scrapped.

Needless to say none of us are happy campers about that.

Medical Update

Home from the hospital. They have added a second antibiotic to her IV. The new treatment is of one antibiotic, wait about a half an hour, and then the other antibiotic. Sandi's leg does not look any better.

Hopefully the new treatment deal will start making progress.

Sandi Update

She is a very unhappy patient for a variety of reasons. While I was there with Scott, her doctor came in to look at her leg. He says her leg looks better and that should mean the IV antibiotic is doing something. Quite honestly, he is apparently seeing an improvement that Sandi and I are not seeing.

The plan is for her to have the round the clock IV antibiotic for the next two weeks minimum. Sometime next week, if it becomes clear the antibiotic is working, they will start setting something up for her to have the IV antibiotic at home. How that will work we have no idea. 

In the meantime she is going nowhere and hating every minute of it. I know for sure I am going back down to the hospital tomorrow. I may stay home for the weekend as heavy rain is in the forecast and my cane does not do well on wet pavement. Neither do I for that matter. I have done way too much the last couple of days out of necessity and am paying the price.

As to reviews, for FFB tomorrow,  Barry's review of  the short story anthology Wicked Women will run. I have several reviews to write and post thanks to a lot of reading at the hospital, but have no idea when I will get to them.

Home from the Cardiologist

We are back home from the Cardiologist. Sandi's visit went as well as it could have considering the situation. Knowing her situation they are billing insurance and then will work with us on what is left on the bill. Things are very bad and their decision is a huge help. Her next appointment is scheduled for July.

We go back to the cancer doctor tomorrow and her leg has not improved at all. Hopefully they will have an idea or two.

Both of us are wiped out and not looking forward to tomorrow.

Sandi's Leg-- A Update

Back home from the doctor. The second culture swab--the one from last week--came back showing the infection they thought it was. Apparently, while the antibiotic sort of slowed it down, it did not stop it. So, a new more powerful antibiotic has been prescribed which she will start as soon as they get the prescription filled.

Her kidneys are not doing well so she stays off the diuretic with the hope being that once the infection starts clearing the massive swelling will start going away.

Back next Wednesday to do all this again.

Back To The Doc

We go back to the hospital this morning so they can check Sandi's leg. Seems to be nearly the same to us though the weeping from the wound site may have stopped. If so, that would be a good sign.

Sandi's Leg--Update

For those who have asked her leg is not any better. Not any worse either which is a good thing, but we have seen no improvement. It is still massively swollen -- especially above the knee---- and the wound area is continuing to weep stuff with very discolored skin extending above and below the site for several inches. Walking

remains almost impossible for her and she is in considerable pain.



The culture did not come back today so the diagnosis of the particular infection they think it is has not yet been confirmed. My big fear at this point is that this will come back in some way related to her terminal cancer. My hope is that it is what they think it is and they just need to increase the antibiotic dose to stop it.

At this point we are still scheduled to be back down at the hospital Wednesday morning so they can look at it.

Very Long Day

Much of the day was spent down at Medical City Dallas Hospital. A routine visit to the cancer doctor for bloodwork and doctor visit escalated quickly once they took a look at her left leg. She definitely has a raging infection in the leg which has caused it to double in size and do other things. They cultured the wound site and those results should be back on Monday.

She also had to do an ultrasound on her left leg to rule out a blood clot. That meant we had to go over to the main hospital where it took them 45 minutes to verify the insurance. Once they did that, they demanded an immediate payment of far more than we had thanks to the misinformation they had supposedly verified. Clearly, even though we have been dealing with this same insurance for months and years now, we know nothing and can't be trusted to provide accurate information. They ran one bank debit charge through today and have backdated another major bank debit charge to the end of the month.  That is going to be ugly.

Finally, they decided they could do the ultrasound. Thankfully, there was no blood clot.

Then it was way back over to Texas Oncology where they had to await results from the scan before they could finally send us home. We had been told already at the time of the scan, but they had to wait till the information arrived over at their office. They finally got that and turned us loose.

She has to be back Wednesday morning so they can asses the leg. It is in bad shape and the fact that she is a diabetic makes all of this much worse to deal with as things don't heal. The leg is to remain elevated as much as possible and she is to stay off it and take her antibiotic.

So, it has been a very long day. She is out cold right now which is most likely the best thing for her.