Day 8 Ahhhhhhhh......

Arrived early this a.m. to have missed the surgical team (of course) and overnight nurse tells me that James slept great! She leaves and he writes that she let him sleep through 2 a.m. pain meds last night so he work up full on pain, way over due, early a.m. He wrote that everyone else seems to be fine waking him up (respiratory, vitals, blood draw, etc) but not the nurse for pain meds. I received a slight reprimand when I asked that they give him the meds overnight whether he's sleeping or not. No, he has to ask for it. I said I'm asking now and she said you're not the patient. Doesn't take much these days to flip the switch and piss me off. I have the note James had written to me with a few descriptive expletives and am thinking of handing it to the same nurse when she comes back on shift tonight at 7 p.m., probably shouldn't. We'll see.

On the other hand our day nurse is nice and kind and gentle and for the most part keeping up with the schedule. I was, however, reprimanded by her for suctioning around the stoma when James coughs. Respiratory Therapy (RT) had shown me how to do it but she's not happy about it. A bit of conflict. Always something. James backed me up with a long written explanation to her about my impromptu training. We'll see if I can keep assisting or not.

Circling back to the surgical team (maybe skip this part if you have a queasy stomach) James told them about "tasting" the saline solution when RT cleaned stoma/trachea yesterday. When RT visits every 4 hours they put saline solution into the stoma to loosen things up and cause him to cough. Most comes out the stoma which they suction but there was quite a bit last night that he had to clear from his mouth. Dr Vaezi had mentioned at his last visit concern about leakage/breach between trachea and esophagus. They took him for a test this morning where he had to swallow a contrast liquid for imaging, a little stressful since he hadn't swallowed anything since before surgery, all food/liquid goes through the feeding tube straight into stomach. He hasn't even had a sip of water. Anyhow he did well with the test even though he was (once again) overdue for pain meds and RT. He's a strong guy and the nurse quickly caught up with meds etc when back in the room. The trip through the hospital with the gurney was exciting. The nurse didn't want to wait for patient transport so she and I pushed the bed through ourselves.

Now we're waiting on some other unknown imaging test that's been scheduled. When inpatient you never have any idea when it'll happen. At their whim. So we're sitting and relaxing back in the room. I'm sitting in the sunshine. James is working on the crossword. We're both breathing easy. Things are currently A-ok.

Thanks for thinking of us. Sending love!