• Fistula

  Filed under Health
  Jul 9

  The Beat Goes On, the beat goes on, drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain, la-di-la-di-dah, la-di-la-di-di! (It’s the Dilaudid, must be.) So, it is now appearing most likely that I’ve got a fistula involving my small intestine, my surgical incision, and surprise! my navel. Though, the the stuff coming from my navel is most likely just coming from another part of the surgical incision and may just be a sub-dermal pathway between the main fistula and the outside world.

  Tomorrow morning (today, really, since it’s about 2:30 am right now) I’m going to have a CT scan. After that, they’ll decide what to do next. Probably surgery. Tomorrow — the surgery would probably be tomorrow, too, but who knows.

  They’ve started me on IV antibiotics but, thank goodness, I don’t seem to have any kind of major infection going on.

  Obviously, I am no longer scheduled to go home on Tuesday. Bummer. I’m awfully glad I’m at such a good hospital, though. One of the many very cool things about being at NIH is that, because there’s no insurance company involved, the doctors don’t have to feel rushed to get you out the door. If they think you need to stay inpatient longer, you just get to stay. Same sort of thing with tests of various sorts. They don’t need to justify them to anyone (except for their fellow medical higher-ups), so you get pretty much whatever might be useful.

  They’ve got my (two now) wounds covered by these very helpful drainage pouches now, so that’s reducing the mess by quite a bit.

  I’m so glad that all of this stuff has pretty much been happening sequentially, instead of simultaneously. Can you imagine if I’d still been in the severe nausea phase and was having the fistula at the same time, for example? That would have been awful. At least, by having one thing happen after another, I get a little pause for a mental re-set with each new problem.

  Share this:

  • Share

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  6 Comments

6 Responses to “Fistula”

1. 

   Valerie said on July 9th, 2012 at 6:53 am

   Forget Sonny and Cher. Try this, to the tune of Ob-La-Di: “Fist-u-la, Fist-u-li (c’mon, stay with me here), life goes, bra. La la how the life goes on.”

   But really. You have to stop with all these holes.

2. 

   Rebecca said on July 9th, 2012 at 8:07 am

   

3. 

   Valerie said on July 9th, 2012 at 2:19 pm

   Tsk tsk. How sloppy of me. “[L]ife goes ON, bra…”

4. 

   Valerie said on July 9th, 2012 at 2:47 pm

   Hey — I talked to my doctor today about going out to Virginia to help after you come home (you know — what with my own issues and whatnot…) She also suggested the possibility of me helping to coordinate your nursing care after you get home. Let’s talk again once we have a “going home date” for you. I may not have a VA nursing license, but I AM still an RN.

5. 

   Rebecca said on July 9th, 2012 at 6:48 pm

   Wow! That would be fantastic! At this point, we’re now looking at the end of this week as a possibility. I’ll definitely let you know when I know something more definite. I know it would be a huge relief to Mark to have you there to help!

6. 

   Valerie said on July 9th, 2012 at 8:10 pm

   Right now it is looking pretty positive

Leave a Reply