Friday

Posted on July 23, 2005

Tagged brad : Update

We're finally kinda in stable mode. The decision was made this morning to move him to a regular room and out of ICU. This meant they took the epidural and catheter out this morning. He's on a morphine pump where he controls the dosage. He also got a drug called Toradol that's an anti-inflammatory. So far, he's had no problems with fever. It was a little over 100 yesterday and down to normal today.

To get him down here to the regular room meant moving him to a wheelchair. They hoped he could sit up for a while, but by the time he got to the private room, he was ready for the bed. We didn't even wait for the guys that helped him into the wheelchair - we and the nurses moved him.

The morphine pump is nowhere near as effective as the epidural was at controlling the pain. That means he hurt all day. He's a little hesitant about hitting the morphine button, even to the point where the nurses told me he should be doing it more so that he can do better on the breathing exercises. On his breathing, he's had good results and bad results alternatively through the day.

Rhonda went home during the afternoon to let the dawgs out and to shower. While she was gone, Brad and I napped. About 4:00, we woke up and he felt like he had to urinate. We tried and tried, but couldn't make it happen. We tried standing up, sitting up in bed, sitting on the visitors couch, and everything in between. The nurses came down also to help and became concerned at how much fluid he had taken in without urinating. They did an ultrasound and determined that his bladder was so full that it couldn't contract to empty. That meant....the catheter again. That was extra incentive to try some more, but he just couldn't go. Finally, the time was up and they stuck the catheter in him. He took it like a man, but just before they did, he wore out the pump trying to get pain medicine in him. They drained 950cc out of him - which is a *whole lot!*

All he's had to eat in three days is jello and some chicken broth. He threw up the broth while he was being catherized.

About an hour ago, the last effects of the epidural wore off and he started hurting in brand new places that were masked before. He's not hitting the morphine pump so that he can try to urinate at 8:30 (or try to), but that means severe pain right now.

We've had better days and we'll have better days again. This is really hard.