Wednesday, May 19, 2011

8:40AM

Just a quick update.

Estelle's feeding tube fell out last night. They were unable to replace it at Woodbine and so they are keeping the site open and we are waiting for the specialists at the hospital to call back with a scheduled time for new tube placement. Hopefully it will be sometime today and the new insertion will go smoothly.

Other than that, she is doing well. I'm sure this will be a set-back as she does not like the ambulance trips there and back nor does she care much for the ordeal of being picked up, put down, poked, prodded and otherwise put through painful procedures.

I certainly don't blame her.

I'll update as things progress.


3:45PM

Back from the hospital. Everything went well. The tube was replaced and anchored as firmly as possible without too much trouble. Estelle handled it well. She was awake and alert most of the time and was very patient and appreciative of the hospital staff's efforts. Her blood pressure was extremely high but we're hoping it's because she was unable to take her tube medications for hypertension and once they get started again it will come back down. They were getting ready to give her the meds when I left about 40 minutes ago.

They replaced the tube with one a size larger. The doctor and I talked about eventually replacing the current arrangement with a much smaller one called a "button," which is much harder to pull out and seems to cause far fewer problems in the people who have long term feeding tubes. We talked about putting one in today, in fact, but because Estelle's skin is still somewhat raw and irritated from leakage he felt it would be a bad idea. This "button" arrangement sits right on the skin and with the area being still quite raw it could cause infection. He felt it would be better to let the skin heal a bit more before trying it.

If this larger size tube works without leaking, we'll leave it the way it is...however, if it continues to leak or if it falls out again we shall think seriously of changing it to the newer one. The only drawback is that many nursing homes are unfamiliar with their care and usage and the staff at Woodbine might not be familiar with them. Not insurmountable, they can learn, but still something to consider. It's not always good to be the patient that they're "learning" on.

By the time we got back to the nursing home Estelle was pretty much exhausted. She told the nurses at Woodbine that she was "terrible," and complained of generalized pain all over. They got her undressed and changed and tucked her comfortably in bed and were going to give her some extra pain medication along with her normal daily meds. She looked very tired so I told her I had to go but that I would be back in the morning and she said that would be "lovely."

Hopefully the morrow will find her feeling better. She's been quite alert recently and we'd really love for her to stay that way.