The meeting

Today mom and I had a family meeting with the nurses and doctor and dad. They do these periodically to address any concern the patient and his family may have, to answer any questions and to apprise us of news on his condition. Before we went into the hospital we sat in the car and wrote down a few important concerns that needed to be brought up. For dads’ decency I cant divulge some of the specifics but suffice it to say that some of the nurses are providing care that is less than good. Its always a bit nerve racking to have to talk to a bunch of people about things that are being done wrong. We could tell too that the nurses in charge were not too thrilled about everything. But as we brought up our concerns they softened up as they realized ALL our questions and concerns were about the well being and safety of dad. In the end, I believe we were heard and things should change for the better as far as care goes.  

We mentioned in a couple of the last posts that dad may have to have surgery. Two days ago, he had a CT to give the doctors a clearer picture of what his lungs look like. Today, Dr. Long showed us a picture of the X-ray, and explained that around the lungs in what is called the pleural cavity there is air being trapped. There are holes in both of his lungs which is a problem. However, in left lung the chest tube is draining the air well enough to allow the lung to expand fully and contact as he breathes. The right lung is a different story altogether. The chest tube is not in a good place and the air is staying trapped. This means that the lung is not able to expand hardly at all. This is called a tension pneumothorax or collapsed lung. It makes it really difficult to breath when his lung is like that. So instead of surgery the doctor wanted to try taking out the old chest tube in the right and repositioning a new one to better drain the air. This afternoon he was able to do just that. As chest tubes are really painful, he did have to give dad some pretty strong pain medication. Dad was pretty loopy afterwards, but he will be able to have a little rest I think, since the medicine made him sleepy.

Dad is still on quite a bit of medication, so he is loopy and confused at times. He is mostly himself but sometimes he says things that are pretty off the wall. One nurse asked him if he remembered the name of any of the nurses that were treating him crappy. His response was no, but he thinks it was the guy with the concrete. To be clear, there is no one with concrete. He does have a sense of humor though… and takes advantage of his ‘loopyness.’ He will say something totally off the wall and then smile and say he is kidding. Mom said he couldn’t joke like that… we all laughed. He has his feistiness too. Mom was asking the doctor a couple of questions about the lungs and dad who had the speaking valve on at the time, looked at mom and asked if it was his turn to talk yet. We kinda just looked at him for a minute wondering if he was joking…he was.

Love, Hannah