Annie: Happy Cinco de Mayo! Matt had excellent care during his procedures–his surgeon, especially, was a truly top-notch human being toward us. Matt was moved back to his room after a short time in post-anesthesia recovery and I was here to help explain, through his fogginess, about what had taken place and the next steps. I ordered Matt some dinner (clear liquids only) 5 minutes before they shut down service at 7pm.
Matt was still pretty sleepy so I decided to head home for a little bit to check on our dog and cat and fortunately our home is less than 5 miles from the hospital. Before I left Matt, I got permission from the night nurse to come back after visiting hours since I wanted to be there to reassure Matt about what had taken place and to help him take his first sips–he hadn’t had anything but a few sips of water since the night before.
When I returned to the hospital around 9pm he was more alert and he slowly sipped an apple juice cup and by 10 pm was sound asleep. I stuck around till 10:45 thinking Matt would stay asleep for the night, and texted him a reminder of all that had gone on that day before I went to bed at home at 11:15.
I started getting texts from Matt from 3:30-5:30am. He was pretty disoriented about where I was and if I could get him more to drink and some pain meds and how to get to the bathroom and when could I bring him decaf coffee. I reminded him to use his call button and get help from his nurse–but it was frustrating for him.
I was able to get to the hospital today before 7am and got more apple juice for Matt. He downed 3 pretty quickly with no adverse effects. He still had pain from the surgery so he got meds that also made him sleepy, but he was able to still drink a couple more apple juice cups until room service could be delivered. He has now had in total: 7 apple juice cups, decaf coffee, vegetable broth, some Ensure (clear) and still has some Jello at the ready. Matt has become increasingly alert with getting all these goodies.
The gastroenterologist came by and seeing how well Matt has done with the clear liquid diet went ahead to advance his diet to “full liquid” which includes a little more substance like apple sauce and cream of wheat type textures! Matt is particularly excited for orange juice. Today he’ll start getting nutrition straight to his stomach with the PEG tube, it’s really a blessing that Matt is able to have food by mouth as well as getting maximum calories to his stomach.
We just met with the dietician who wants to slowly increase his calorie intake via tube feeding (2 feedings today, 3-4 tomorrow and 5 on Sunday) to see how he tolerates it and whether his electrolyte levels get outta whack. So that seems to mean that he won’t be discharged home until Monday. This is hard news for Matt (well, us both) as he really just wants to be at home, but we understand that specialized care is needed right now.
The good news is that the Star Wars Marathon is still going on from yesterday, but the bad news is that we had to watch Episode 1 (if you know, you know).
Matt & Annie - Journey 