After spending 452 days in the hospital, and being trained to do home dialysis for Chris he finally got to go home. However, we did not get to stay home for very long. He has been in and out of the hospital several times. He’s had a GI bleed that was starting to show up before he was discharge from his long stay. He was in the hospital three different times due to the GI bleed. It was never actually fixed. Instead the took him off the larger dose of blood thinners and put him on a low dose blood thinner to only prevent new blood clots from forming, not to treat the blood clots he already has. The blood clots that developed while he was in the hospital on the low dose blood thinner. He has also had s few hospital stays due to his feeding tube not staying in it’s proper place, thus causing him to vomit and the tube feed to just drain out of his stomach into his G-bag. It has been a whirlwind couple months.
He is currently in the hospital for the J-tube (feeding tube) being out of place again. Since it was out of place he vomited and aspirated on the tube feed. That’s what caused the beginning of this stay. At first they tried saying his tube was in his proper place, but after more imagining they decided the tip had flipped backwards. While reviewing the abdominal CT scan the radiologist put in his report that Chris has kidney stones in both kidneys, and they had been visible on the CT from his previous hospital stay. He had some smaller stones that were a threat to blocking the ureter (tube that goes from the kidney to the bladder). They went in and removed the smaller stones. This caused bleeding in his foley. They flushed his bladder for days and had to give him more blood. The urologist said there is no need to remove the large stones as they don’t pose a threat of blocking the ureter. I’m no doctor, but I would think that a stone that is 13mm and 14mm in the kidneys would make it harder for the kidneys to function properly. If you covered the majority of your air filter the air filter would not be able to properly filter the air.
This is only one of the issues from this hospital stay. His trach cuff has had issues staying aired up since the day it was placed during his last hospital stay. I had pointed out that the cuff should not need aired up four or five times a day. It was a faulty cuff, but I was told it’s a new trach so it will be fine. If it worked properly the tube feed would not have made it into his lungs.
Due to the pain from his kidney stones and procedure to remove them he was grinding his teeth. They discovered on a chest CT that he had a tooth in his lung! He has swallowed one of his teeth and since the cuff won’t hold air it didn’t stop the tooth from making it into his lungs.
No one here could believe he had a tooth in his lungs. Unfortunately, it did not surprise me. I tried to get them to pull all of his teeth for fear of this very thing happening. He has had so much chemo and radiation that his teeth are in terrible shape. A year and half in the hospital with only swabbing his mouth with mouth was every two hours hasn’t’ helped his teeth either. Anyway, it took them days to make a plan, get his hemoglobin up and get the tools needed to try to get the tooth out. They went in this morning to try to get it out, without any success. The tooth has moved to the lower lobe of his lung. The doctor said the tooth is too big to get it scoped up in the basket. While they were in there with the bronchial scope they spent an hour suctioning infection out of his lung.
Tomorrow he will be transported to a bigger hospital so they can go in the better tools and try to get the tooth out. Then he will be transported back to this hospital. This has been a very complicated and frustrating hospital stay. He needs all the prayers, good vibes and mojo that he can get to be able to pull through this mess.
#FORCHRISSAKE