In October last year (2013) she began having severe pain in her hip – she thought it was sciatic nerve pain and sought help from her doctors on all facets. They sent her to physical therapy saying it was the Parkinson’s dyskinesia and rigidity starting to set in. They didn’t see any reason to do an MRI. She even tried acupuncture. Nothing was helping. Finally, in January/February this year she sought out my cousin (her nephew) who is an anesthesiologist in the SLC area – he works at a pain clinic and told her to come down. He ordered the MRI and found that she had 4 or 5 places in her back that were not right; he couldn’t believe she had lived with it for so long. He put her in touch with a neurosurgeon there in Ogden that did her surgery at the beginning of March. Everything went beautifully she was healing well, up walking around the day after surgery (she had those places in her back screwed back together or something like that).
She was released from the hospital on Thursday.
On Saturday she was at her sister’s in Orem and started having similar symptoms to a pulmonary embolism like she had had a few years back in her lung. This was concerning so they went into the ER and discovered that she had developed an infection at the wound site from her surgery, either from the hardware they used in surgery or just and infection at the site- I don’t think it was ever determined how she got it. Fortunately it wasn’t MRSA, but a different strain of staph (MSSA) still awful – but not as awful as it could have been. She was ambulanced back to Ogden to be near her surgeon and the original medical staff that took care of her.
On Monday after she went to the ER she had a second surgery to irrigate the surgery area and clean it out from whatever infection found its way in. (This is the one Trish and I went down to be with my dad for). We got the “all ok” report from the neurosurgeon after the surgery and were told to wait for her to come out of recovery. As we waited about 2 hours later a bed wheeled by and Trish saw that it was my mom- they had her “bagged” meaning she wasn’t breathing on her own and the anesthesiologist caring for her told us that there were complications with her trachea tubing post op and they realized she wasn’t getting any air for several minutes…finally someone thought to pull the trachea tube out (this is like a 1 in a million chance of every happening) they discovered a kink in the tubing, thus the not being able to breathe part. We followed the bed to the ICU and as we started to go back the docs stopped us at the door and off she
went surrounded by medical staff and the doors closed. We couldn’t tell what was happening. It was scary.
She ended up on a ventilator because she couldn’t breathe on her own at that point. She was heavily sedated and looked super swollen and quite frankly awful. It was at this point Trish and I called all of our siblings and told them to come. All arrived the next day except for Scott whose wife had just had a baby C-section a few days prior.
When she got off the ventilator she was all sorts of confused, the meds messed with her mind, she couldn’t speak, and she was hallucinating like crazy. It was so awful to watch her go through that. She was flat on her back for 4 days to let the wound heal like it should. She was still being treated via IV and oral antibiotics to treat the staph.
Long story short she was in the hospital for about a month maybe a bit more actually, my dad never left her side except to sleep, which we made him do. Then the surgeon didn’t want her to leave until they got the infection under control so they ended up living in a cabin in Huntsville that some kind soul let them stay at for another month and were able to come home just before Mother’s day. She still had the PICC line and IV antibiotics 24/7 after she left the hospital. My dad changed her IV daily with new meds until last week when the PICC line could not be unplugged due to clotting or whatever the case and the surgeon had the home health nurse pull the line out since the meds weren’t being distributed as they should. She is glad that the line is out it made her arm terribly sore but she doesn’t get as potent dosing with the oral meds. And they have made her very nauseated which also makes her crazy.
It’s been a rough go, still not out of the woods, we cry a lot. My dad is exhausted. She feels awful that she needs so much help and we all just do what we can for her and for my dad.
She was released from the hospital on Thursday.
On Saturday she was at her sister’s in Orem and started having similar symptoms to a pulmonary embolism like she had had a few years back in her lung. This was concerning so they went into the ER and discovered that she had developed an infection at the wound site from her surgery, either from the hardware they used in surgery or just and infection at the site- I don’t think it was ever determined how she got it. Fortunately it wasn’t MRSA, but a different strain of staph (MSSA) still awful – but not as awful as it could have been. She was ambulanced back to Ogden to be near her surgeon and the original medical staff that took care of her.
On Monday after she went to the ER she had a second surgery to irrigate the surgery area and clean it out from whatever infection found its way in. (This is the one Trish and I went down to be with my dad for). We got the “all ok” report from the neurosurgeon after the surgery and were told to wait for her to come out of recovery. As we waited about 2 hours later a bed wheeled by and Trish saw that it was my mom- they had her “bagged” meaning she wasn’t breathing on her own and the anesthesiologist caring for her told us that there were complications with her trachea tubing post op and they realized she wasn’t getting any air for several minutes…finally someone thought to pull the trachea tube out (this is like a 1 in a million chance of every happening) they discovered a kink in the tubing, thus the not being able to breathe part. We followed the bed to the ICU and as we started to go back the docs stopped us at the door and off she
went surrounded by medical staff and the doors closed. We couldn’t tell what was happening. It was scary.
She ended up on a ventilator because she couldn’t breathe on her own at that point. She was heavily sedated and looked super swollen and quite frankly awful. It was at this point Trish and I called all of our siblings and told them to come. All arrived the next day except for Scott whose wife had just had a baby C-section a few days prior.
When she got off the ventilator she was all sorts of confused, the meds messed with her mind, she couldn’t speak, and she was hallucinating like crazy. It was so awful to watch her go through that. She was flat on her back for 4 days to let the wound heal like it should. She was still being treated via IV and oral antibiotics to treat the staph.
Long story short she was in the hospital for about a month maybe a bit more actually, my dad never left her side except to sleep, which we made him do. Then the surgeon didn’t want her to leave until they got the infection under control so they ended up living in a cabin in Huntsville that some kind soul let them stay at for another month and were able to come home just before Mother’s day. She still had the PICC line and IV antibiotics 24/7 after she left the hospital. My dad changed her IV daily with new meds until last week when the PICC line could not be unplugged due to clotting or whatever the case and the surgeon had the home health nurse pull the line out since the meds weren’t being distributed as they should. She is glad that the line is out it made her arm terribly sore but she doesn’t get as potent dosing with the oral meds. And they have made her very nauseated which also makes her crazy.
It’s been a rough go, still not out of the woods, we cry a lot. My dad is exhausted. She feels awful that she needs so much help and we all just do what we can for her and for my dad.
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