Day 2: Scans and Corrections

Busy day. Here's the low-down. Jean FINALLY made it from the PACU (or Recovery Room) to her patient's room on the 10th Floor - at 7:00 PM this evening. What took so long? Since this morning, she had an ultra-sound and an MRI. She's never had an MRI before. You know that's special.

She didn't sleep well last night due to anesthesia wearing off. In fact, she could hardly nap for more than 10 minutes without someone poking, prodding, asking questions, running an ultrasound reader, or putting her in a scanning machine. She should have gone to her patient's room this morning, but the best laid plans...

The epidural controlled the pain nicely, but there was a problem. Jean can't lift her right leg or kick it. She can move it in other ways, bend at the knee, wiggle it, but can't keep it straight and lift it. The anesthesiologists said it wasn't uncommon for these type of side effects to occur.

But Dr. Hanto is working this weekend and didn't take any chances. Her ordered ultrasound and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) tests to determine if there were any rare disorders, like compressed nerves caused by bleeding or hematomas. As far as we knew at 8:00 PM, all of the tests were clean and normal. Hopefully this will wear off, but we're going to keep looking at it. They also removed the epidural and put her on regular pain meds.

We had good nurses today, and, of course, Dr. Hanto and his team. Mostly quiet at Beth Israel today, at least from what I saw. For several hours, Jean was the only patient in the PACU.

She's sleeping tonight, finally. She probably won't be taking visitors tomorrow, but I'll get everyone her room number, telephone, and visiting hours just as soon as she gets her rest. Because she's in the Transplant wing, where many patients are protected from even the slightest infections, they don't allow gifts like flowers or food. Other than that, they seem pretty cool about visitors. When I know more, I'll let you know.

P.S. - I've been printing out these blogs and the comments everyone has posted and have been reading them to Jean. They really cheer her up. Whatever I paid for this website has been earned back with interested. Gracias!

CORRECTION: Yesterday I wrote that Jean now has two kidneys on her left side. For some reason, the anesthesiologists, nurses, and even some of the scan technicians all thought the right kidney had been moved to the left side. However, when the ultrasound technician was scanning for the second kidney, he couldn't find it. All of us were confused and a little worried, until Dr. Meng, Hanto's chief resident, walked into the ultrasound lab. "Why are you looking on the left? It's on the right." Um, we thought you guys moved it over. "Yeah, but we moved it down further, right next to the bladder." He would know, he did the moving. When I looked at my written notes from talking with Dr. Hanto last night, I actually wrote down "right". Yet most of us in the PACU thought it had been tossed laterally. We couldn't figure out why it was stuck in our heads. Maybe it sounds cooler. "Two kidneys on the left."

Posted by gasbarro at March 18, 2006 11:38 PM