Tanya's Lung Transplant 17: 9/18/09

The bravo ph test results showed that Tanya definitely has reflux, but not an excessive amount. Now we have to wait, probably until Monday, for the G.I. surgeon to make a decision about whether to do the nissen operation or not. Other than the stomach issue, she's doing incredibly well. Yesterday she had the dressings removed from her sides where the chest tubes were and today the chest tube stitches were taken out. She has been walking 3 laps around the transplant section of the hospital twice a day, or twenty minutes on the treadmill.
Tonight she had her feeding tube clogged yet again by a hasty nurse who seems to be in too much of a hurry to do things right. When people don't take the time to crush the meds well and let them dissolve enough before injecting them into the tube, it gets clogged, and then they have to spend forever trying to unclog it. Of course all this time she's disconnected from her feedings, so her blood sugars get thrown off. On top of the clogged tube, this nurse bumped Tanya's nebulizer off the table and spilled all the medicine out. Then she said "I'll have to rinse that." Tanya's had several nurses of this exact type - they all have this "of COURSE I'm right, I know what I'm doing" attitude, and usually they say things like this while giving someone the wrong medicine, or the wrong dosage, or making some other careless and stupid mistake. Sometimes it's hard to stay positive through all the incompetence, but it's important to try and remember all the things that are going well for us, when it seems like everything is going wrong.

Feeling better even though the pain still lingers

right side chest tube holes

left side chest tube holes and part of incision

raised incision - this was the side they reopened to go in to fix the air leak /pocket.

left side incision, chest tube holes, and pain patch under the tape