To say I am relieved that January is over would be an understatement. Though it was exciting to have Emma start walking.
The day after Christmas I get a call from my dad that he's in the ER. After running some tests they find out his gallbladder needs to be removed. I wasn't too concerned as I know several family members and acquaintances who've had theirs removed.
The day after the surgery my grandma calls and tells us he's being moved to the ICU. He is taking on fluid and it's putting pressure on his kidneys and his lungs. With every breath his kidneys are failing and his heart is running a marathon trying to keep up with everything. His surgeon decides that an exploratory surgery needs to be done to determine the cause and will keep him heavily sedated afterwards so his organs can heal after all the trauma.
I really appreciated how his surgeon was always straight forward . He didn't sugar coat things. He told us that without surgery my dad would die. Breathing was becoming more and more labored. I'm not too happy that he had to wait 2 hours before an operating room opened!
The surgery revealed that bile was leaking out of his liver into his abdomen. His gallbladder was so inflamed and diseased that it had caused an adhesion on his liver. Once his gallbladder was removed, bile started leaking out of the adhesion. Having had his gallbladder removed laparoscopicly the surgeon didn't see the condition of his liver and the bile leaking out. His surgeon put in a few drains for the bile to be drained out of his body and then flushed out all the bile in his abdomen and hopefully any bacteria as well.
Bile is very caustic and it had caused massive inflammation inside. His stomach was left open, covered with mesh, to let the inflammation go down. You should have seen how many IV bags he was connected to. There were two racks full of medicines, some even stacked onto each other. He was also intubated and on a breathing machine.
Then to make matters more dire, the next day my dad became septic. A massive bacterial infection had started, despite flushing out his insides. Thankfully they are able to filter out the toxins from his blood created from the septic shock and get all the septic symptoms under control. His kidneys are healing and he is breathing as they turn down the breathing machine. They had hoped his liver adhesion would heal causing the bile output to slowly decrease. His liver was still leaking too much bile but the inflammation was down so a stent was installed so his liver will always drain into his large intestines instead of periodically like it does in a healthy liver.
A week later he was no longer septic so they wake him from the coma but he has a case of ICU amnesia. He gave yes or no answers to any question and only talks when he is questioned. He had no clue about easy questions like where he is or what the year is. He was easily very confused and sometimes very agitated. He did know people. His ICU amnesia slowly cleared up and his infection became manageable, so they moved him out of the ICU after a couple of weeks. They moved him to Surgical Intensive Care. He starts having fevers again and feeling nauseated all the time. They do a CAT scan on his stomach and they see it is full of some thick fluid. Using local anesthesia, a drain is placed and it starts pumping out lots of the puss, something about his PIC line becoming infected.
Finally with the infection under control he is moved to the rehabilitation floor. Now he is home and getting better everyday. I am so thankful for all the prayers that were said in his behalf. I know Heavenly Father answered a lot of them because we were so worried. He nearly died! My Dad sometimes feels very lonely and I know he has appreciated all the help he has received over the past 7 weeks or so.
So with that major stress gone (big sigh of relief), I can finally get finished and posted some very important updates on our kiddos.
