In urgent need of prayer for my mother!
I am new here, I posted my first post yesterday asking about the leak in thoracic duct, and I did get informative info from William! And he asked me to give more information regarding my mother surgery. So I am writing this post.
My mother had a transthoracic esophagectomy on 7/19, everything went well initially beside of low blood pressure, and she stayed in CVICU for 8 days. Then was transferred to other floor when the blood pressure was under control on the 9 th day. Unfortunately, her condition started to deteriorate on the 10th day. First the drainage from the chest tube was milky white which is called chyle leakage. The her left arm became swollen. My mother condition is not getting better. Beside of the leak in the thoracic duct, she has no appetite to eat, she has blood clot due to the Pitt line on her left arm, her body produce antigent eating up many of the blood platelet and now the her plate count is only 9 because of the medicine to prevent blood clot, and a different type of blood clot med is been giving to my mother, her kidney is not working adequately to produce enough urine, and today they just found her number of white blood cell is increased which is an indication of infection, and she is going to have antibiotic through IV. I asked the Dr. regarding her chance of living, the Dr. said her condition is going to get worse before she gets better. What should we do? I am extremely concern that she might not make it and I am helpless. Please share any information you have. Please pray for her that she will recover from all the complications.
Lina
Comments
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So sorry to hear your Mother is having a hard time.
Wow!! She's really going through it. My husband was in ICU for 9 days and on the heart monitor floor for another 3 and a half weeks. He had a lot of issues, his wound got an infection; no food by mouth the whole time; difficulty with infection/irritation around the jtube, etc., etc. I have no answers to what she is facing. I do know that recovery is very difficult. It is really a fight. My husband had the Ivor Lewis. He needed lots of encouragement. Fast forward two years, after a long post 7 months or so, he's eating and enjoying life. Hopefully, your mother will be able to have a like opportunity.
Prayers for your Mother and your family.
BMGky0 -
Sending you and your familyunknown said:This comment has been removed by the Moderator
Sending you and your family the very best thoughts and wishes.0 -
Thank you!BMGky said:So sorry to hear your Mother is having a hard time.
Wow!! She's really going through it. My husband was in ICU for 9 days and on the heart monitor floor for another 3 and a half weeks. He had a lot of issues, his wound got an infection; no food by mouth the whole time; difficulty with infection/irritation around the jtube, etc., etc. I have no answers to what she is facing. I do know that recovery is very difficult. It is really a fight. My husband had the Ivor Lewis. He needed lots of encouragement. Fast forward two years, after a long post 7 months or so, he's eating and enjoying life. Hopefully, your mother will be able to have a like opportunity.
Prayers for your Mother and your family.
BMGky
My mother did not have a tube for feeding even she has difficulty swallowing. Initially, the Surgeon for the abdominal part of surgery told me she was going to put a tube for feeding, but she did not do so because the cardiac thoracic surgeon suggested not because my mom weight was well controll after chemo and radiation. So now my mother does not have adequate nutrition while losing fatty acid through chyle leakage. Now we wished the doctor had put the tube for feeding.0 -
Thank you for your encouraging wordunknown said:This comment has been removed by the Moderator
Hi William and Loretta,
I will need to trust in our God that He will take us through this. He is the one created the universe, and so loved us even died for us. I will pray the our Lord Jesus will grand more peace and faith, that I will be strong for my mother.
I will ask the doctor the question you have suggested.
One good news that I got from the nurse is that the blood test for sepsis has improve from 2.7 to 1.6 which is a normal range, and they will do another blood test to confirm that. The sepsis is the part the Dr. said I should be more concern about. Thank you Lord Jesus that the infection is under control.
We will need to continue to pray for my mother that 1. the thoracic duck will heal and the leakage will stop, 2. The blood platelet number will back to normal range, 3. The blood thinner will work to prevent blood clot, and her body will dissolve all the clots, 4. That she will be well hydrated and her kidney will function properly.
Thanks again for all your prayers
Lina0 -
My dad had Pulmonary Embolism and chylethorax ductLina71912 said:Thank you for your encouraging word
Hi William and Loretta,
I will need to trust in our God that He will take us through this. He is the one created the universe, and so loved us even died for us. I will pray the our Lord Jesus will grand more peace and faith, that I will be strong for my mother.
I will ask the doctor the question you have suggested.
One good news that I got from the nurse is that the blood test for sepsis has improve from 2.7 to 1.6 which is a normal range, and they will do another blood test to confirm that. The sepsis is the part the Dr. said I should be more concern about. Thank you Lord Jesus that the infection is under control.
We will need to continue to pray for my mother that 1. the thoracic duck will heal and the leakage will stop, 2. The blood platelet number will back to normal range, 3. The blood thinner will work to prevent blood clot, and her body will dissolve all the clots, 4. That she will be well hydrated and her kidney will function properly.
Thanks again for all your prayers
Lina
Lina,
You gone through the wringer, I can relate so much. My father was diagnosis 7-1-2011 T3N2M0, had chemo & radiation.
On Fri. Oct. 7, 2011 he had his surgery, the ups and down’s afterwards, was quite chaotic. Here’s is a little information about my dad:
2-Sat., Oct. 8 Dad’s heart rate increase and oxygen decrease, oh boy! What is happening? They need to do a chest x-ray and informed us he needs a CT scan of the lungs with dye, could be a collapsed lung or blood clots. After Dad’s test they informed us he has pulmonary embolism in both lungs one side is quite large and half the other side. So Grandpa is in ICU with concentrated oxygen, heparin and other meds. They didn’t want him to move yesterday, just lay in bed until the heparin becomes therapeutic.
7-Thursday, October 13, Grandpa tired from being up last night and in a lot of pain from the pig tail drainage. He’s doing good walking about 5 walks a day 11 min. per walk. What a surprise today, Carolyn and Gregory walked into grandpa’s room around 6pm tonight! The dr’s came in said the lung hasn’t had much drainage since last night, but they don’t like the color of the fluid. Time will tell! Chest x-ray looks good, if no addt’l fluid, they will be removing it. They put Grandpa on continuous feeding from his J tube, uh-oh---too rich for his small-intestine. Bathroom all night long!
9, 10, 11-Saturday Oct. 15, Sunday, Oct. 16 and Monday Oct. 17, Grandpa been's walking more and starting drinking a little better 2-4 ounces of clear liquid per hour. Oxygen level is staying around 96% without addtl oxygen, pulse rate is maintaining along with blood pressure. Gregory and Carolyn flew back home Sunday night, it was great having seeing them and Gregory gave grandpa some inspiration.
Unfortunately, over the weekend the ball (jp) tube kept filling up with fluid red color, they were hoping that the chyle leakage would repair itself.
12-Tuesday, Oct. 18, the ball tube fluid came out yellowish, milky and every 30 min. needed to be drained. They decide about 8 pm last night he needed surgery to repair the chyle. Due to the pulmonary embolism in the lungs, they gave him 2 units of plasma and surgery will be sometime tomorrow.
13-Wednesday, Oct. 19, around 7:30 Grandpa was getting 2 units’ plasma. They came up and said were taking you down. They first put in the green filter in the groin (to block future clots), time to seal off the chylethorax duct they went in exactly how when they remove the esophagus, deflate the lung, same incisions and so on surgery was about 3 hrs.. They did check out the esophagus and said that was pink and taken, which is excellent news. They said the surgery went good, heparin will be started sometime tonight, took a chest x-ray already, blood work. I guess it’s a wait game to see if it’s been repair, they put him back in ICU to monitor him closely so I'm glad for that.
Dad is doing well after surgery, tired but doing the best to his ability. He needs to keep the chest tube in for 48 hrs and the ball tube for a while with continuous monitoring. We pray that he will be out next week and post-op with the surgeon 2 weeks from getting released from the hospital.
The best advice I can give you, is lots of prayers! 2-make your mom get up and walk on the hour. She will be very upset with you, but in order to get everything working she needs to move. On my phone, I have a stop watch and we couldn’t go back into the room after so many minutes and each day I would increase by 30 seconds to a minute. The doctor’s told us this really helped him to recover. Of course dad didn’t always appreciate it and would get a little irritable with us.
But the good news, his 8 months post-op shows NED (they removed 36 lymph nodes-NED, esophagus removed 3/4-NED, downgraded his tumor T2NOM0!
Keep praying and walk with mom and MAKE SURE YOU’RE HER ADVOCATE!
If you have any questions, please ask.
Carolyn0 -
Please pray for her, the blood platelet has dropped further.casp42 said:My dad had Pulmonary Embolism and chylethorax duct
Lina,
You gone through the wringer, I can relate so much. My father was diagnosis 7-1-2011 T3N2M0, had chemo & radiation.
On Fri. Oct. 7, 2011 he had his surgery, the ups and down’s afterwards, was quite chaotic. Here’s is a little information about my dad:
2-Sat., Oct. 8 Dad’s heart rate increase and oxygen decrease, oh boy! What is happening? They need to do a chest x-ray and informed us he needs a CT scan of the lungs with dye, could be a collapsed lung or blood clots. After Dad’s test they informed us he has pulmonary embolism in both lungs one side is quite large and half the other side. So Grandpa is in ICU with concentrated oxygen, heparin and other meds. They didn’t want him to move yesterday, just lay in bed until the heparin becomes therapeutic.
7-Thursday, October 13, Grandpa tired from being up last night and in a lot of pain from the pig tail drainage. He’s doing good walking about 5 walks a day 11 min. per walk. What a surprise today, Carolyn and Gregory walked into grandpa’s room around 6pm tonight! The dr’s came in said the lung hasn’t had much drainage since last night, but they don’t like the color of the fluid. Time will tell! Chest x-ray looks good, if no addt’l fluid, they will be removing it. They put Grandpa on continuous feeding from his J tube, uh-oh---too rich for his small-intestine. Bathroom all night long!
9, 10, 11-Saturday Oct. 15, Sunday, Oct. 16 and Monday Oct. 17, Grandpa been's walking more and starting drinking a little better 2-4 ounces of clear liquid per hour. Oxygen level is staying around 96% without addtl oxygen, pulse rate is maintaining along with blood pressure. Gregory and Carolyn flew back home Sunday night, it was great having seeing them and Gregory gave grandpa some inspiration.
Unfortunately, over the weekend the ball (jp) tube kept filling up with fluid red color, they were hoping that the chyle leakage would repair itself.
12-Tuesday, Oct. 18, the ball tube fluid came out yellowish, milky and every 30 min. needed to be drained. They decide about 8 pm last night he needed surgery to repair the chyle. Due to the pulmonary embolism in the lungs, they gave him 2 units of plasma and surgery will be sometime tomorrow.
13-Wednesday, Oct. 19, around 7:30 Grandpa was getting 2 units’ plasma. They came up and said were taking you down. They first put in the green filter in the groin (to block future clots), time to seal off the chylethorax duct they went in exactly how when they remove the esophagus, deflate the lung, same incisions and so on surgery was about 3 hrs.. They did check out the esophagus and said that was pink and taken, which is excellent news. They said the surgery went good, heparin will be started sometime tonight, took a chest x-ray already, blood work. I guess it’s a wait game to see if it’s been repair, they put him back in ICU to monitor him closely so I'm glad for that.
Dad is doing well after surgery, tired but doing the best to his ability. He needs to keep the chest tube in for 48 hrs and the ball tube for a while with continuous monitoring. We pray that he will be out next week and post-op with the surgeon 2 weeks from getting released from the hospital.
The best advice I can give you, is lots of prayers! 2-make your mom get up and walk on the hour. She will be very upset with you, but in order to get everything working she needs to move. On my phone, I have a stop watch and we couldn’t go back into the room after so many minutes and each day I would increase by 30 seconds to a minute. The doctor’s told us this really helped him to recover. Of course dad didn’t always appreciate it and would get a little irritable with us.
But the good news, his 8 months post-op shows NED (they removed 36 lymph nodes-NED, esophagus removed 3/4-NED, downgraded his tumor T2NOM0!
Keep praying and walk with mom and MAKE SURE YOU’RE HER ADVOCATE!
If you have any questions, please ask.
Carolyn
My mother will be transferred to icu.0
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