Little changes

As I returned yesterday I found that not much had changed since I left last week.
Jennie is not sleeping as much this week, and seems to be moving a little bit better, but she still says her pain is at about the same level as last week. I am sure she will begin to show more progress as her body continues to heal over the next few weeks. Her incision also looks much better this week than last week, although her abdomen is still very swollen and sore.

We are still here!

I know it has been several days since I posted last, but we are still here and Jennie is still doing fairly well. She is still very sore and the recovery is not going as quickly as any of us hoped, but there haven't been any big setbacks either. She is still sleeping about 12 hours a day (yesterday was 15 hours), and the incision still hurts when she is awake.

Today I will be going back to Louisville to work this weekend, but will be returning next week on my off days. Hopefully Jennie will have made some more progress by then, but we now see why Dr. Sutherland said it would probably be 6-8 weeks before she was able to do much. We will be at week 4 tomorrow, and I think we are easily 2 weeks away from Jennie being able to walk normally and to reduce the pain medicine much.

We made it!

We made it back into Owensboro late on Wednesday after a long car ride over some pretty rough roads. Needless to say, Jennie was pretty wiped out and we spent much of yesterday just resting and recuperating.

We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers over the last few weeks, but we ask that everyone understand Jennie still has a lot of recovery to do. This was a very major operation and her entire stomach is still trying to heal, so it will likely be several days or even weeks before she feels up to seeing people in great numbers. She will be staying here in Philpot for a while, although I plan to return to Louisville and begin working again probably late next week.

Halfway There!!

So we managed to make it to Rockford, IL yesterday, although Jennie was very sore afterwards. The roads were less than desirable and the bumps made Jennie very uncomfortable. I think that we should be able to make it in 5 or 6 hours today, so we most likely will finish the trip today.

On the road!

Jennie continues to show progress, and her appointment yesterday went well. Dr. Sutherland is pleased with her progress and will be following her progress at home with her doctors in Owensboro and Louisville. He would like to see her back within a year just for a general follow-up, which he likes to do with all his islet cell transplants.

Now that we have that done, we will be hitting the road today. It will be somewhere between 12 and 14 hours, so it will take at least 2 days to make the trip. We will just have to see how well Jennie does with the long hours in the car before we decide about taking a third day. She is still very sore and gets worn out easily, so we will see.

Day 1 out of hospital

Jennie continues to do well today, and got her first good night of sleep since the surgery. We only had to get up for pain medicine 1 time last night, and she was able to sleep for about 10 hours, which I was very impressed to see.

Her blood sugar has been in the low normal range, and she has only had to give herself one unit of short-acting insulin (this is in addition to the long-acting they want her to take every night regardless of where her levels are). I am sure her blood sugar will begin to rise as she eats larger portions and more regularly, but that is why we have to insulin. At this point are more worried about her blood sugar dropping too much overnight than about it getting too high.

We are considering making the trip back three days instead of the two it took to come up here. We are just worried that 7 hours will be too long in the car for Jennie, but we will most likely wait until we start back and see how it goes.

Sayonara Hospital !!

So it is official, Jennie is being released today!! The paperwork has yet to be completed, but we will be going to a different hotel this evening that has a suite for some extra room. The plan is to stay until we can see Dr. Sutherland again in his office on Monday afternoon. This appointment was optional, but I think it will be better to give Jennie a few more days of rest before we make the long trip back to Owensboro. It will also keep us close to the doctors here already familiar with her case if something were to happen in the next few days, but I am sure it won't.

Also for those of you that are following, Charlotte is doing better and from what I understand they are talking about moving her out of ICU soon. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get hold of her husband since right after the surgery, so I don't have a whole lot of additional info.

Please continue to keep Charlotte in your prayers, hopefully in a few weeks she will be to the point that Jennie is.

Big News!!

So this morning the doctors talked about possibly discharging Jennie tomorrow!!! While we are very excited about this possibility, we are somewhat upset because she has yet to receive the training and education she is supposed to have received. Before the surgery we were told that she would nutrition education and diabetes training, and so far we have only had a very quick crash course in "poking" your self, no real education. We addressed that today with the doctors, so hopefully someone will kick it into high gear and get the ball rolling on that.

Other than that, Jennie is doing much better and is starting to eat a little more each day. She is still having a lot of pain, but she describes it as being from her incision and not related to her eating, which is much different than before. Hopefully as the incision heals her pain will begin to diminish more.

Day 12 evening update

So Jennie still continues to do well and they will be discontinuing her TPN when the current bag finishes in an hour or two. This will mean that the only thing the IV is being used for is the antibiotics, and I think those will be stopped within the next day or two. Hopefully she will begin to get an appetite and we can actually try something other than cheerios and apple juice tomorrow.

I also have an update on Charlotte, she has been out of surgery since about 7pm. They were able to get a good islet cell harvest, so hopefully that part of the surgery will be very productive. Unfortunately she had a lot of damage to her intestines and colon, and they had to remove a portion of both. She will be going down to the ICU floor tonight, although they haven't said exactly where at. John said that they had anticipated some type of problem like this due to several surgeries she had previously, and every other aspect of the surgery did go pretty well. Needless to say though, Charlotte could use a lot of prayer as the surgery is now over and she will begin the recovery process.

Recovery Day 12

Again today Jennie is doing pretty well. We have gone on several walks and they have Physical Therapy came in today and Jennie tried stairs for the first time. She did very well, and I am sure will improve even more with a little practice. I really feel like Jennie will be able to get around without any assistance when she is released, she will just have to be careful not to over do it for a while.

And just a brief update on Charlotte. I talked to her husband a few minutes ago and her surgery is going pretty well. The doctors came out about 2:30 and told them they had completed the main portion of the surgery (Jennie's surgery started somewhat earlier, so it is difficult to compare the times) and are just waiting on the islet cells to be harvested. He felt that they would be able to get a good harvest with her also, so that is very good news. She did have some previous damage from some other surgeries, so the doctors felt that they may still have to do some more repairs to her colon and intestines, but they haven't decided exactly to what extent yet. All in all her surgery is also going very well, they anticipated some additional issues do to the prior damage, and I hope to be able to post a good final update on her surgery late tonight.

Continue to keep Jennie as well as Charlotte and her family in your prayers, they still have many hours of waiting before they will know the final results, although it sounds very promising so far.

Update day 11 and Prayer Request

So Jennie's pain meds aren't working as well as the IV was, but she is trying to tolerate it to try and get it down quickly. They also adjusted her insulin somewhat trying to better prepare her for when she really starts eating again. Although she was allowed to eat today, she didn't have much appetite and only at a bite or two of mashed potatoes and a few bites of rice krispies. We don't know if this is because she is still getting nutrition through the TPN in the IV or if there is something else, but tomorrow they will be stopping the TPN so we should know more then.


I also wanted to briefly ask for a prayers as I have a distant cousin (I believe a third cousin if I did the math right) that is actually up here and will be having the exact same surgery tomorrow. I went and met with her tonight and I think was able to provide some insight into the surgery and the recovery, so hopefully they feel a little more at ease now. Her name is Charlotte Ryan, and I know that she would appreciate all the extra prayers as tomorrow will be a very tough day for them (if anyone understands, we do).

Big Steps

So Jennie was switched to oral pain meds last night, although they left the Duladid PCA pump hooked up so she could push the button for additional pain relief if needed. So far she has needed to push the button occasionally, but I think her pain level is somewhat below where we were afraid it was.

Today seems to be a good day again, and we will be trying a low-fat diabetic diet today (solid food for the first time!!) They just brought the tray in, so hopefully we can get Jennie to try several things. I am sure her blood sugar levels will go a little crazy with this change, but hopefully it will go pretty well.

Unfortunately Jennie was up a lot last night, the nurse was new and woke her several times. She is tired today, but at least she was up for some reason other than being in pain.

Thank You

I just wanted to put a quick update on here to let everyone know that we got our first group of cards and gifts today. I didn't count but I would guess that there were more than 30 cards, which is very humbling. Jennie and I both really enjoyed reading the cards and wanted to thank you all for sending them. Knowing that there are so many people out there praying and thinking about Jennie gives us a lot of comfort, Thank You!!

Another day of Progress

So again Jennie has made some good progress today. It is now about 4 pm and she has already gone for 3 walks, and I am sure we will get one more in today. Her blood sugar has been better today, and she has been up out of bed most of the day so far.
Unfortunately we did find out that they found MRSA in one of her samples, but we really aren't too concerned about it, that culture was from early in the week and she has been on Vancomycin since then that should have taken care of it. They will check it again, but we think that may have been the coughing she was having.

The doctors also talked about trying to get Jennie off of the IV pain med and back onto oral meds within the next few days. The only problem is that she hasn't really experimented with anything other than water, so we have tried some Jello and Apple Juice today to see how that goes.

Now let me explain real quick why the blog hasn't been updated all day. Yesterday afternoon some wonderful little thug broke into Rita's Van and stole the GPS, leaving the drivers side window shattered all over the place. We were really very lucky that there was nothing else taken, her camera and several other valuables were in the back seat. So this morning Rita was having to deal with getting that taken care of and I was by myself here at the hospital (go figure I ran out without the laptop). All is taken care of now, but it just made one more thing for us to have to deal with.

Day 9 Recovery

Let me begin by saying that today has been better than yesterday, thank goodness. Jennie is still hurting, but her pain level is back down to the 6 or 7 range it was two days ago. We went for a long walk today around almost the entire 6th floor of the hospital, all of which Jennie did without any assistance (other than me helping keep the IV pole going).

We got to see Dr. Sutherland today, and he thinks that her fluctuation in the blood sugar is due to her not being on constant TPN (an IV feeding), so he wrote orders changing her TPN to a lower but constant dose. He also is going to have an Endocrinologist come in and talk to us about the blood sugar and how to regulate it when we leave the hospital.

Unfortunately Jennie didn't sleep very well last night so she is pretty tired, but I think she if feeling much better. Hopefully we can get some more walking in today and let her get some more rest.

I Spoke too soon . . .

So I am sad to say that I may have spoken too soon earlier when I said that today seemed to be going well. Jennie has been out of it most of the day just generally not feeling good. She will be freezing cold one minute, then burning up the next, or her arms will be hot and her legs freezing, etc., etc.

She only managed to get out of the bed for one walk early this morning and to sit in the chair for a short while this evening, which was much less activity than we were hoping for, but she has been very tired and in pain all afternoon and evening.

Even though she has been able to have clear liquids all day, she has only felt like drinking small amounts of water, and in fact was unable to keep that down. The nurse gave her some compazine shortly afterwards, and her nausea has been better since. Jennie also has been in more pain all day, and is in fact moaning in her sleep now which she hasn't done since the first night or two.

The doctors and nurses had warned us that there would be some bad days mixed in with the good, so hopefully today was the worst of it. I know as sore as Jennie's abdomen is vomiting must have been very painful, and I hope that this was the last time for a while.

Please pray that tomorrow will be a new day fresh with progress and less pain.

Day 8 of Recovery

Again today Jennie is doing pretty well. The doctors came in this morning and told us they are pleased with her progress. While some have recovered quicker, she also has had no real complications aside from the mystery infection that she is on antibiotics for.

The doctors have also ok'ed her to try a clear liquid diet, which is the first step towards getting her back on regular food, and one of the biggest hurdles left. She continues to walk several times a day and is spending a good portion of the day out of the bed and in the chair. She is very tired today, but we wore her out pretty good yesterday and the doctors said energy will very greatly until we get her insulin shots more stable.

That is probably the other difficulty we have had, is that her blood sugar has been high much of the last day and a half since we started the long-acting shot instead of the IV. Again though the doctors say that it will take several days to get it regulated, and when she starts on solid food it will begin to vary again, all of which is normal.

Keep Jennie in your prayers, hopefully recovery will continue to go well and we can get her onto solid food in the next few days.

She's doing well

This morning the Doctors came in and removed Jennie's NG tube from her nose as well as the drain from her abdomen, which I know will make her much more comfortable.

Her blood sugar levels are still fluctuating quite a bit, but they said that is to be expected now that she is off the insulin drip and only taking shots to regulate it. They also said that they will be increasing the dose of the long acting insulin some to try and reduce the variances some.

Other than that, they started her on an extra antibiotic for pneumonia, they saw some fluid in an ultrasound they did yesterday and want to stop it before she gets full pneumonia. Her liver function has come back to the normal range, so they aren't as worried about infection but they will still be monitoring it.

Yesterday was the first day that Jennie has actually been awake most of the day, and we got her out of bed several times, including a walk with Physical Therapy around the entire floor of the hospital. Other than that we watched a lot of TV and movies, which she really seemed to enjoy. If fact when we got here this morning, Jennie was already up and watching Finding Nemo with Stitch at her side :-)

Recovery Day 6

We made it in today early enough to see the doctors, which was a relief since we haven't had much contact the last few days. The plan for today is to get Jennie off of the Heparin IV and her Insulin IV and try to switch her to a subcutaneous shot daily. It will be somewhat of an experiment the first few days trying to get the levels right, but it has to happen at some point.

They also said they plan on raising her pain med a little since she is doing more movement and her pain has increased as a result. Our only concern with that is she is having a difficult time staying wake for any period of time that the increased meds will only make her grogginess worse.

She is supposed to be getting up at least 3 times a day, and they will be removing her catheter to try and motivate her more. They also mentioned that the X-ray showed nothing besides some fluid in her left abdominal cavity where they removed the pancreas from, which is normal.

It seems that things are still pretty well on course, although we feel like her progress is somewhat slower than some talking to the doctors and nurses who see these transplants regularly. We would like for her recovery to be very quick, but any progress is still progress and so far we haven't had any big setbacks, which is a blessing.

Recovery Day 5

Today Jennie again appears to be doing better. The swelling is down more than it has been in months, although she is still running a slight fever and the blood work indicates she still has an infection somewhere. The doctors that came in before we arrived said that they weren't too concerned about the infection and would be watching it for the next few days until they were able to get the cultures back to determine exactly where it is.

The only other real issue is that they have decreased her pain medicine quite a bit, which is causing her to hurt more than she has the last few days but they feel she isn't coming down quickly enough on her own.

Other than that there isn't much to report today, but hopefully Dr. Sutherland will be around lunchtime to give us some more information and to answer a few questions we have.

I thought I would post this drawing that we had done last Thursday at the Mall of America, we both thought it was very good.

Address to send Cards

Sorry, I just realized that I never posted the address you can send cards to for Jennie.

Fairview Medical Center
420 Delaware Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Floor 6B - Room 239

IMPORTANT - Due to the floor we are on, they won't accept flowers real or silk, and we ask only for cards due to the limited space.

Thanks, I know Jennie would really appreciate hearing from everyone!

Recovery Day 4

Again today Jennie seems to be doing well. Unfortunatley we got here after the doctors had already come by this morning, for some reason they seem to keep coming earlier and earlier everyday. Jennie says her pain is about the same as yesterday but there is a noticible reduction in her grogyness, so we can tell her medication has been lowered significantly.

On the agenda today is to try and get Jennie to walk a little, maybe even out into the hall. I don't know if this is a bit much, yesterday just getting to the chair really exahausted her.

The only other issue is that Jennie still has some swelling, although it appears to be mostly in her legs and feet. They don't want to give any more lasix because her fluid output has been fairly high, but getting up and moving some more should help it.

Her blood sugar levels remain stable, which means that they have finally stopped checking it every hour (her poor fingers were getting butchered). The nurse is going to try and get the doctors to return, so hopefully we will know more later.