One Bad Random

For Thanksgiving this year the plan was the usual, head down to my parents' place and have some food, hang out for a day or two, and head back home to enjoy some time off. I took Wednesday off so we could head down early and possibly avoid the extra traffic. Tuesday night Lisa (my wife) started feeling a bit off and running a fever. Since she'd been sick with a cold the previous two weeks I thought we should go ahead an cancel the trip.

Later that evening she started getting a pain in her side. The pain progressed into a sharp stabbing pain. Eventually while sitting up she realized that she couldn't stand upright without a lot of discomfort. Around 1:15 in the morning (now technically Wednesday) she was finally willing to go to the emergency room. We got there a little before 2am and after sitting in the waiting room for an hour or so we finally got in to see a doctor. They ran an IV and gave her some painkillers that made her quite happy. They did the usual, took blood and urine. The blood showed an elevated white blood cell count so they decided to do a CAT scan.

After more waiting they came in with the news that she had a large abscess on her left kidney and that she'd be spending some time in the hospital. We finally got her checked into a room around 7 in the morning.

The next day around 2pm they did another CAT scan and used it for visibility to suck some pus from the abscess and to run a drain through her back to her kidney to allow the abscess to drain even more.

They continued giving her antibiotics via the IV and periodically flushed and checked the drainage from the tube coming out of her back. Flushing consists of turning a lock on the tube and injecting saline through the tube up into the area around her kidney. This fluid along with some infected pus then drains back out into the bag. They measure the drainage minus whatever saline they push into it to determine how much longer they need to leave the drain in. They also found out that she is allergic to Vancomycin. The Vancomycin made her itch and one of her hands started to swell. They gave her Benadryl to counteract the reaction.

Although she had been up and around to go to the bathroom all through this ordeal, by Friday she was able to actually walk even though she had substantial discomfort. The drain and antibiotics continued and by Saturday and Sunday she had improved to being only slightly sore and was able to take a couple of 15-30 minute walks per day, just in time to see the Christmas decorations going up around the hospital.

By Monday they finally decided the drain could come out, which she assures me was quite painful due to the loop of stiff tubing they had to pull through the incision in her back. After that she was cleared to go home. She's on an oral antibiotic for a month and will have to go in for another CAT scan in around 6 weeks to make sure everything is still doing okay.

And that's how we spent Thanksgiving in 2006.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.