Same road, different day

Dad had his surgery on Thursday as planned, and it seemed to go well. But on Thursday night, the tube came out, he was vomiting, and he went into atrial fibrillation. As Dad said Friday, it was like E.R. in his room, with all the people rushing in and out! Dr. Okolo flew back from New Jersey, where he'd gone to give a talk, just to take care of Dad. The doctor figured someone had made a stupid mistake. But it turned out that the balloon in Dad's stomach was defective (how much bad luck can one person have?). They got it fixed and got Dad's heart rate back under control, and by the time I saw him on Friday he was in good spirits and sounded so much stronger than he had a month ago.

Unfortunately, the tube is still leaking, though not as badly as before. So we're not terribly sure what the next step will be. Dad is getting IV nutrition (nasty looking yellow stuff) but really needs to be able to get food into his stomach, and lots of it, if he's ever going to heal. Dr. Okolo should be in today, so we'll see what he says.

On Friday St. Joseph's finally came up with a bed, but since we're happy with Dr. Okolo and have been happy in general with Sinai except for the GI doctors we had before (and the clueless staff on the sixth floor), Mom and Dad declined it.

At one point we thought Dad would be getting home by Easter, and now it's looking like we'll be lucky if he's in rehab by Easter. Dad's hospital stay reaches the three month mark tomorrow, and the complications and screw-ups have been unbelievable. The swallow therapist has flat-out refused to give him another swallow test, but Dad's medical staff is wanting to put pressure on her either to do the test or to do the therapy he needs to pass the test -- to delay because "that's rehab's job" is just plain bad medicine. So maybe something will change this week. Let's hope!