Friday March 18

This blog is for family and friends to recieve updates on Wendy's progress as she tries to recover from complications after surgery. I will try to update this blog each day. Today is the 10th day that mom has been in the hospital. She is at Rose De Lima Hospital in Henderson, Nevada. She has suffered through the original surgery, a second emergency surgery to clean up an abscess that burst, sepsis, a bedsore, possible pneumonia, extreme weakness and extreme pain since she entered for what was supposed to be a simple, safe, effective and easy mini-gastric bypass surgery. She was supposed to have the surgery one day and leave the hospital the next day able to take care of herself. It has been an emotional roller coaster for everyone as we have anxiously waited for news, feeling hopeful when we hear something good and then feeling hopeless and shocked as we hear something not good. Today was no exception. It started out okay. Our low last night was finding out that Mom's white blood cell count had risen from 13,000 to 21,000 yesterday. The Dr. said he'd order a CT Scan if it was still raised today. This morning, her wbc count had dropped slightly to 18,000 and the Dr. felt that because her other vital signs were okay, no tests or action was needed. A few of us expressed concern to the Dr. that because Mom was not getting any better, we felt it was time to bring in a second Doctor who specializes in what to do when things go wrong. We also expressed that we wanted to be proactive in doing tests so we could rule things out, rather than waiting for some urgent need because something turned bad. He said he did not think those things were necessary but that he would comply with our wishes. Several hours later, a second Dr came in to Mom's hospital room and examined her. Her temperature was raising...38.6 C at that moment which translates to 101.5 F. Between that and her white blood cell count being so high, the second Dr. feels Mom is possibly getting another infection. He ordered a CT scan, which will be done as soon as mom has fasted for enough time so her body can take the dye/contrast. He also said he was going to look over lab reports to find out what cultures and tests had been done. If appropriate tests had not been done, he was going to order them. A short time later, the blood guy came in to draw blood for tests. Now we are all anxiously waiting for the CT scan results and cultures to come back. If a leak or infection is present, a third surgery may be necessary. This is critical timing as we wait to find out the news.