Semi-monthly post
Hello everyone!
So, here’s my monthly (semi-monthly…) post. :-) It’s 2:30 pm on Good Friday…My entire floor seems to be mostly empty except for the Grossman & Associates office…Oh no, those weirdos are still “working.” (In case you don’t know, GA is the company I work for) I say “working” because I don’t have a DAMN thing to do. I’m pretty much sitting here scratching my ass today. We have a big release going out on Monday, but Jackie and I have tested everything that we have to test. We’re waiting on one of the programmers to finish his fixes, so we can test those, do a standard test and be done with the damn thing. But Nooooooo…Sri wants to take all day to do two or three things. So Jackie and I just sit and wait. I wish there was something for me to do…Instead, I just sit here and stare at the clock, willing it to hurry up and get to 5pm. Two and a half hours to go…:-P Hell, even if Sri got all his fixes in right now, we still wouldn’t be able to get much done…We test his fixes and then assuming everything’s cool, we start a build. This is a process that takes at least two hours. Poop on waiting for that to get done.
Okay. Done bitching about work. How about something more interesting…? Do I start with baddish or goodish news? Um…Let’s end on a high note. I’ll start with the baddish, which actually becomes kinda goodish, news.
My mom is back in the hospital. Two weeks ago today, as my dad was getting my mom ready for bed, her feeding tube popped right out of her belly. This tube has become an imperative part of her existence. It’s the only way that we can give her all of her medications, as her muscles are not strong enough to swallow a whole pill, let alone 25 in a day (not really exaggerating there, that’s probably a realistic number). So Dad drove them over to the hospital, the doc in the ER inserted a new tube and everything seemed to be hunky dorey. Dad drove them home, they went to bed, end of story…Or so we thought. Saturday morning, my mom’s mom (Omi) came over while Dad went over to the library and was doing a couple of other small errands. While he was gone, Omi decided to roll Mom from her side to her back, so she could more comfortably watch the tv. When Omi did so, she noticed that Mom’s belly was VERY distended - told me later that it looked like my mom was 9 months pregnant. Mom was also having a difficult time breathing, so Omi called Dad, who rushed home and called 911.
When she got to the hospital this time, they had to put tubes down her nose and hook her up to a ventilator to help her breathe. Then they determined that the reason for her belly being so big was that she had an impacted bowel and said that because of the impaction, it was putting pressure on her lungs, which was, in turn, causing the labored breathing. They also insisted that the impacted bowel and everything else had nothing to do with the changed feeding tube, though we have our suspicions otherwise. But what can we prove? We’re just lowly peasants…They said once they got all the gunk cleaned out of her intestines, she should be able to breathe better and life would be back to normal. So, once they started getting her system cleaned out, they took the tubes out of her nose and she was breathing okay on her own for about an hour, but then began to have a difficult time again and made the decision to intibate through her with tubes through her mouth. This is relatively more comfortable than the nose, but no where near a definite feeling of comfort. It took them 2 hours to get these tubes down her throat…They had to put her under a general anesthetic and all this crazy stuff. Code red, people running around, scurrying to do whatever they could to get these tubes into her lungs. They finally got them in…Disaster averted…for now.
They continued to try to get all the shit out of her intestines, but were unable to take her off of the vent, for fear that she wouldn’t be able to breathe once they took the tubes out. If they were to take out the tubes and she couldn’t breathe on her own, they didn’t want to chance that they couldn’t get her airway open in time. Together with my parents, the doctors decided that the best option would be to perform a tracheotomy. This would allow Mom to be much more comfortable, despite having a hole cut into her neck. It would also allow doctors/nurses/my family a much easier way to help Mom breathe. There’s a tube that goes down into the lungs that suctions all of the excess gunk out of there…Because her muscles are so weak, my mom is unable to cough up the mucus that you or I would think nothing of. This shit builds up in her lungs, making her susceptible to pneumonia, among other problems. And it would also give the flexibility to turn down or off the ventilator and allow Mom to work on building up the strength in her lungs again.
The surgery was scheduled for last Friday afternoon. That morning, the doc that was supposed to do it, had to reschedule the procedure, saying that another emergency surgery had come up and that he’d do Mom’s on Monday, since it wasn’t a matter of life and death. Saturday afternoon, while Omi was with Mom, she noticed that the tube going into Mom’s mouth looked a bit askew and went to get one of the nurses. This nurse fiddled with the tube a bit and it did, in fact, end up coming out. So they had to call the doc that rescheduled and he had to come in to do an emergency trach, anyway. Later on, he came up to Mom’s room in the ICU and apologized and did the whole spiel about hindsight being 20/20.
Now for the goodish news, related to the baddish news (I guess it’s not really baddISH…It’s pretty bad…). Mom is much more comfortable with the trach and seems to be in better spirits. She was happy to see me when I was out that way on Wednesday…She can’t talk, per say, but she can mouth the words. I’ve become pretty good at reading lips, as have my dad and Mom’s CNA, Rosetta. Mom insists that I’m the best at it, but I think it’s more that the things that she and I talk about, I pretty much already know what she’s trying to say before she says it. Sometimes, it’ll take me a couple guesses, but I eventually get it. On Tuesday, the respiratory doc decided that they’d reduce the amount of work that the vent was doing, to see how she’d do on her own. Basically, the vent was just putting a little bit of pressure behind her own breaths that would help her get enough oxygen. But she was doing most of the work on her own. She was able to hold out for about 10 hours and then they put the vent back up to do all the work. Wednesday, they had her doing it on her own for 12 hours. Yesterday, they were supposed to switch her to a different machine that would not do any of the work at all, it would just provide vaporized oxygen for her to breathe. I haven’t talked to my dad today, but my assumption is that no news is good news, when it comes to this. So, that’s where we’re at with my mama. Any prayers or positive thoughts can be sent to Christine Murphy, c/o her loving daughter, Jen.
On to my goodish news…I suppose it’s not really quite goodish, yet…lol How cryptic can one be??? Chris and I have decided that it’s time to start a family. :-D YAY! I went off the pill about a month ago, I started taking prenatal vitamins and have been taking my “Basal Body Temp” every morning at 6am. I’m learning when my ovulation dates are and have been reading all kinds of info about conceiving and what works and what doesn’t…Day One of the “cycle” should be in the next few days (unless I’m already prego, which wouldn’t be terribly great, seeing as how I can’t take advantage of my short term disability until January and my company doesn’t offer maternity leave), so a couple weeks later, we’ll be going at it like bunnies (Chris is super excited about that part). Sooooo…Hopefully within the next couple months, I’ll have definite GOOD news and will be able to make a happy announcement.
My boss just gave the whole office the OK to go home early, since we’re doing nothing, so I’m getting outta here!!! I WILL post this once I get home.
So, here’s my monthly (semi-monthly…) post. :-) It’s 2:30 pm on Good Friday…My entire floor seems to be mostly empty except for the Grossman & Associates office…Oh no, those weirdos are still “working.” (In case you don’t know, GA is the company I work for) I say “working” because I don’t have a DAMN thing to do. I’m pretty much sitting here scratching my ass today. We have a big release going out on Monday, but Jackie and I have tested everything that we have to test. We’re waiting on one of the programmers to finish his fixes, so we can test those, do a standard test and be done with the damn thing. But Nooooooo…Sri wants to take all day to do two or three things. So Jackie and I just sit and wait. I wish there was something for me to do…Instead, I just sit here and stare at the clock, willing it to hurry up and get to 5pm. Two and a half hours to go…:-P Hell, even if Sri got all his fixes in right now, we still wouldn’t be able to get much done…We test his fixes and then assuming everything’s cool, we start a build. This is a process that takes at least two hours. Poop on waiting for that to get done.
Okay. Done bitching about work. How about something more interesting…? Do I start with baddish or goodish news? Um…Let’s end on a high note. I’ll start with the baddish, which actually becomes kinda goodish, news.
My mom is back in the hospital. Two weeks ago today, as my dad was getting my mom ready for bed, her feeding tube popped right out of her belly. This tube has become an imperative part of her existence. It’s the only way that we can give her all of her medications, as her muscles are not strong enough to swallow a whole pill, let alone 25 in a day (not really exaggerating there, that’s probably a realistic number). So Dad drove them over to the hospital, the doc in the ER inserted a new tube and everything seemed to be hunky dorey. Dad drove them home, they went to bed, end of story…Or so we thought. Saturday morning, my mom’s mom (Omi) came over while Dad went over to the library and was doing a couple of other small errands. While he was gone, Omi decided to roll Mom from her side to her back, so she could more comfortably watch the tv. When Omi did so, she noticed that Mom’s belly was VERY distended - told me later that it looked like my mom was 9 months pregnant. Mom was also having a difficult time breathing, so Omi called Dad, who rushed home and called 911.
When she got to the hospital this time, they had to put tubes down her nose and hook her up to a ventilator to help her breathe. Then they determined that the reason for her belly being so big was that she had an impacted bowel and said that because of the impaction, it was putting pressure on her lungs, which was, in turn, causing the labored breathing. They also insisted that the impacted bowel and everything else had nothing to do with the changed feeding tube, though we have our suspicions otherwise. But what can we prove? We’re just lowly peasants…They said once they got all the gunk cleaned out of her intestines, she should be able to breathe better and life would be back to normal. So, once they started getting her system cleaned out, they took the tubes out of her nose and she was breathing okay on her own for about an hour, but then began to have a difficult time again and made the decision to intibate through her with tubes through her mouth. This is relatively more comfortable than the nose, but no where near a definite feeling of comfort. It took them 2 hours to get these tubes down her throat…They had to put her under a general anesthetic and all this crazy stuff. Code red, people running around, scurrying to do whatever they could to get these tubes into her lungs. They finally got them in…Disaster averted…for now.
They continued to try to get all the shit out of her intestines, but were unable to take her off of the vent, for fear that she wouldn’t be able to breathe once they took the tubes out. If they were to take out the tubes and she couldn’t breathe on her own, they didn’t want to chance that they couldn’t get her airway open in time. Together with my parents, the doctors decided that the best option would be to perform a tracheotomy. This would allow Mom to be much more comfortable, despite having a hole cut into her neck. It would also allow doctors/nurses/my family a much easier way to help Mom breathe. There’s a tube that goes down into the lungs that suctions all of the excess gunk out of there…Because her muscles are so weak, my mom is unable to cough up the mucus that you or I would think nothing of. This shit builds up in her lungs, making her susceptible to pneumonia, among other problems. And it would also give the flexibility to turn down or off the ventilator and allow Mom to work on building up the strength in her lungs again.
The surgery was scheduled for last Friday afternoon. That morning, the doc that was supposed to do it, had to reschedule the procedure, saying that another emergency surgery had come up and that he’d do Mom’s on Monday, since it wasn’t a matter of life and death. Saturday afternoon, while Omi was with Mom, she noticed that the tube going into Mom’s mouth looked a bit askew and went to get one of the nurses. This nurse fiddled with the tube a bit and it did, in fact, end up coming out. So they had to call the doc that rescheduled and he had to come in to do an emergency trach, anyway. Later on, he came up to Mom’s room in the ICU and apologized and did the whole spiel about hindsight being 20/20.
Now for the goodish news, related to the baddish news (I guess it’s not really baddISH…It’s pretty bad…). Mom is much more comfortable with the trach and seems to be in better spirits. She was happy to see me when I was out that way on Wednesday…She can’t talk, per say, but she can mouth the words. I’ve become pretty good at reading lips, as have my dad and Mom’s CNA, Rosetta. Mom insists that I’m the best at it, but I think it’s more that the things that she and I talk about, I pretty much already know what she’s trying to say before she says it. Sometimes, it’ll take me a couple guesses, but I eventually get it. On Tuesday, the respiratory doc decided that they’d reduce the amount of work that the vent was doing, to see how she’d do on her own. Basically, the vent was just putting a little bit of pressure behind her own breaths that would help her get enough oxygen. But she was doing most of the work on her own. She was able to hold out for about 10 hours and then they put the vent back up to do all the work. Wednesday, they had her doing it on her own for 12 hours. Yesterday, they were supposed to switch her to a different machine that would not do any of the work at all, it would just provide vaporized oxygen for her to breathe. I haven’t talked to my dad today, but my assumption is that no news is good news, when it comes to this. So, that’s where we’re at with my mama. Any prayers or positive thoughts can be sent to Christine Murphy, c/o her loving daughter, Jen.
On to my goodish news…I suppose it’s not really quite goodish, yet…lol How cryptic can one be??? Chris and I have decided that it’s time to start a family. :-D YAY! I went off the pill about a month ago, I started taking prenatal vitamins and have been taking my “Basal Body Temp” every morning at 6am. I’m learning when my ovulation dates are and have been reading all kinds of info about conceiving and what works and what doesn’t…Day One of the “cycle” should be in the next few days (unless I’m already prego, which wouldn’t be terribly great, seeing as how I can’t take advantage of my short term disability until January and my company doesn’t offer maternity leave), so a couple weeks later, we’ll be going at it like bunnies (Chris is super excited about that part). Sooooo…Hopefully within the next couple months, I’ll have definite GOOD news and will be able to make a happy announcement.
My boss just gave the whole office the OK to go home early, since we’re doing nothing, so I’m getting outta here!!! I WILL post this once I get home.