Unexpected Surgery Day

What a day.. 

After not get much sleep the night before, she woke up feeling pretty nauseous and some abdominal pain. The PA stopped in and after talking with the team they scheduled her surgery for Friday, but said if things take a turn for the worse they might try to move it up. 

Annie continued feeling nauseous and ended up getting sick which was not a good sign. She would feel better for a little bit after but the nausea kept coming back. On top of that, she had a highly elevated heart rate all day and a fever. Eventually, the PA got too concerned and worked with the surgery team to get her surgery moved to to later Wednesday evening and ordered an NG tube be placed in the meantime. They put the NG tube in morning after and It was a pretty rough process that could have been handled better, but in the end, it did help relieve the nausea. It was a very uncomfortable and painful couple hours, during which, it hurt so bad to talk she used her phone to type out communication with me and the nursing staff. 

Around 7:15 they wheeled her back to the OR. They said it would take 2 hours or so but I was pleasantly surprised when they called at 8:45 saying the surgery was done and went well and to meet up for a detailed rundown. 

They were very glad that they were able to move surgery up due to the state she was in. The way her intestines were positioned, nothing was draining and gravity was just pulling everything down causing backup and dilation and all sorts of issues. They ended up needing to make an incision in order to drain and clean up the area as well as repositioning everything. They reconstructed and enlarged the stoma and overall were very happy with how things went. Still a ways to go for recovery but the goal is that she can get the NG tube out today and start moving to get things functioning and healing. Her fever and heart rate are already back to normal so it seems like her body isn’t fighting itself and all great signs.