Late Monday update

Dad's nausea continued to be a problem through all of my evening visit with him. When I arrived, they had given him an anti-nausea medication which did no good whatsoever, based on his vomiting shortly after I arrived. Throughout the visit, he kept this up, either almost vomiting or actually vomiting. They tried a second dose of the anti-nausea medication (explaining that the painkiller he's on as well as the heart medication frequently causes nausea), which again did no good, so they tried a different type of anti-nausea medication. At this point, he was vomiting copious amounts of brown liquid (too much information? Sorry. But wait--it gets worse!) so they pulled out a big irrigation syringe and started suctioning out the contents of his stomach. The nurse said he was checking his stomach volume--he'd pull out some brown bubbly liquid (while we made comments about high tech bulimia and tried to figure out if it looked more like Coke, root beer, or a good stout, which got an actual smile from Dad), put it in another container, pull out some more, and this just kept going and going. In all, he pulled out 500 c.c.'s of liquid (is that right? The math doesn't work out, but I'd swear that's what the nurse said). Dad had been getting 20 c.c.'s of sugarwater per hour since that morning, so basically he hadn't been digesting ANY of it. This is completely normal after surgery; the digestive system often shuts itself down for a couple of days. When some doctors examined Dad early this morning, they said that they'd start him on sugar water on Tuesday, but later they decided to start it today, thinking it might help his pain. Instead, it added to his misery--anytime his abdominal muscles would spasm or he'd have to cough (something that is incredibly painful for him at the moment), it would make him vomit, or nearly vomit. So it seems as if this was simply a volume control problem. But here's the gross part--after suctioning out his stomach, they then put it all BACK IN! The nurse explained that he needed the gastric juices in the fluid so that he could start digesting again. Ewwwww. Needless to say, they've cut off the sugar water for the time being and will reintroduce it VERY slowly later on.

They are also culturing some secretions from his lungs. In the past couple of days, the secretions have increased quite a bit and the color has changed, both worrying signs, and we're concerned that he's developed a new or stronger pneumonia. I'm hoping that the volume increase is just because of his inability to cough out all this stuff himself. There's no sign of fever, so that's a good thing. We'll keep praying that this isn't yet another new complication.

When I left, Dad seemed very tired, still in a lot of pain, and absolutely miserable from the vomiting. He insisted that he was fine on his own for the night. His nighttime nurse is great (a familiar face from CICU) and only has two patients, so I hope Dad is comfortable and able to rest and that the nausea goes away.