There is such a thing as being too good at taking care of someone. Or so the Doctors are telling us. Apparently, if Mom and I were not such good caretakers, the Mayo would have had Tony back in-patient several days sooner. This did not make Mom and I very happy when we heard it yesterday. In fact, we cried. We feel like we made the situation Tony is dealing with last longer because the doctors had so much faith in us. We made it worse.
OK, we know that is not REALLY true, but...
Tony has been In-patient now for 2 days. The doctor is quite sure we will be seeing progress, Tony will be feeling progress, but it is going to be SLOW! Even now, when Dr. S and our PA look in Tony's mouth, they can see active healing and this is good!! However, we are ministering to Tony most of the time that we are at the hospital with him. He has large amounts of liquid coming out of his eyes that needs to be cleaned away, gently, and then he has 2 drops and 1 salve to put in his eyes. (we can see improvement there since Friday) Then his lips are cracked and ulcerated, so we clean those, also gently, and apply a vitamin salve. (we see improvement there since Friday as well) He is getting several salves on various parts of his body and a wound care specialist is looking at an additional one for some painful sores Tony has in unmentionable places. So, we are lubing him up several times throughout the day. The Doctor also says his skin rashes look improved. Again, the improvements we see will be incremental and slow, but improvement none the less!
He will be on IV fluids and nutrition for at least another 2 days, if not more. Initially, I had said he would be in the hospital 'til about Friday, but its possible it will be longer. We will see.
Our big drama today was about an enema. Tony is going to have some scopes done- upper and lower GI- and normal procedures are to get an enema before hand. Well, one of Tony's unmentionable places is where an enema would be administered and where the results would come out. This is not the time for additional, painful things to be done to that area. So, we all were stressing out for part of the day because the GI Doctor seemed to be insisting on the enema and Dr. S. had told us earlier that is was not necessary. Sooooo, Dr. S. to the rescue! No need to put Tony (and us) through such a potentially painful and embarrassing procedure. So, now we just need to deal with the possible pain and discomfort of the GI scope invading that oh so painful and private region! :)
One last thing - check out the number of pumps and bags and tubing running into Tony!
