Last Friday Mr.P came home from hospital stay part deux. He rested a couple days, then Sunday we went to some friend's house for the joint birthday party of their daughter and M2. It was a fun party and the kids had a blast (um, hello, we rented a bouncy house. How fun is that?!) I was a little worried about Mr.P that day, because despite the 85 degree temperature outside, he was wearing a sweatshirt and hat during the party as he sat on the deck out back. He didn't eat or move around much, and he complained of being cold a few times. On the drive home, his voice took on the gravelly mumblely tone it takes on when he is extremely tired or ill. I meant to take his temp when we got home, but I was distracted with getting the kids in the house and meeting their needs. Mr.P came in the house and went straight to bed. About an hour later I woke him up to take his temp. It read 101.6. I was afraid he had another infection and instantly put in a call to the answering service for his doctor's office. Mr.P then called me into the bedroom to talk. He began speaking slowly, and I could tell he was having trouble finding his words. At first he was stringing together words that didn't make sense or go together. I was a bit confused. I asked him for clarification. He began speaking a little more rapidly, telling me a story about something he thought was going on in our house that was obviously completely crazy. I became really concerned, realizing that he was in a state of delirium. My BFF, H, was over at the time and I am so thankful she was here to A) help keep me from losing my sh*t, and B) help with the kids while I handled the situation. To make a long story short, the on-call doctor called back, and luckily it was Mr.P's doctor who was on-call. He was concerned about an infection around the kidney and wanted to schedule a fluid drain for the next day. He gave me a plan for treating the fever and advised the delirium may be caused by an electrolyte imbalance (thank you Gatorade for fixing this problem!) The next day Mr.P was feeling better and elected to hold off on the fluid drain since he was feeling better.
By Tuesday, Mr.P was still very lethargic and not eating much. He kept getting really high fevers that would spike up, then go away for 12-24 hours. Upon waking up Tuesday I called his primary care doctor to see about getting him in right away. Unfortunately his main doctor is now on maternity leave, so we saw a new doctor. This was both good and bad - good because it gave us the chance to have a fresh set of medical eyes review his case to try and figure out the problem. Bad because we had to go over so much history of what has been going on the past 6+ months. The new doctor was really great and listened to everything and was very thorough in explaining how she wanted to proceed. We then visited the lab for more blood work and the radiology lab for chest x-rays. Poor guy has had more blood draws and x-rays in the past few weeks than I can count.
Tuesday night, we were watching TV when the phone rang around 10:30 PM. It was the radiologist reviewing Mr.P's x-rays and she was concerned he may have a perforated diaphragm and wanted to see how he was feeling since apparently this is a fairly serious condition that can be fatal about 30% of the time. As it turns out, she was missing the information that he had a laproscopic surgery 2 weeks ago, and the pocket of air she was seeing on the film was not a tear in the diaphragm, but a pocket of gas from the surgery which will eventually be absorbed by the body. Phew - crisis averted. At the time it was a bit scary to say the least! Wednesday morning we spoke to the GP and she advised that the lab was running behind but she should have results by Thursday. That leads to today. Bright and early this morning she called to let us know that the lab results show Mr.P has a serious inflammation in his body. She wasn't sure if this was indicative of an infection, an auto-immune disorder or a cancer. Though she did reassure us some by telling us that she had consulted with a hematology oncologist (a blood cancer doctor) who reviewed Mr.P's file and did not think he had any kind of blood cancer present. She also stated that since he had a thorough CT scan last month it would have caught many other types of cancers. It was her opinion that the fluid that has been sitting around his kidney should be drained ASAP as it may be the infection causing his poor physical condition and lab results. Did I also mention his blood pressure at the GP's office was 78 over 52? That is bad, very bad. So today was spent back at the hospital all day, having the fluid drained and monitoring his vitals. Upon entry to the hospital, the automatic blood pressure machine kept coming up with an error - his BP was so low it couldn't read it. For most of the day his BP was around the 80/50 mark. Due to this, the poor guy wasn't able to receive the full dose of drugs to make him comfortable for the fluid drain procedure.
When he was in tears over the pain and discomfort I held his hand and wanted to cry for him. Today was our wedding anniversary, and through all of this I have truly learned and understand the meaning of "in sickness and in health." I cancelled our babysitter for the night since we were obviously not going to be able to enjoy a fun night out, and instead we came home from the hospital around 7 PM. I cooked dinner and ran around triaging the needs of the kids and Mr.P until it was bedtime for the kids.
To make things worse, P5 has been having sleep issues. I have been trying to slowly begin the weening process. I would love to breastfeed him until 1 year, but I just don't think it will work for us right now. With all the time I've had to take away from the kids for Mr.P's medical appointments, I need P5 to be able to take a bottle, and to be able to take a bottle of formula. Also, his sleep has been so poor I was hoping that weening him and getting him on a feeding schedule with bottles would help fix that. So far we have been failing miserably. I've learned that he isn't really eating much at night; most of his late night/early morning nursing sessions are just comfort sucking sessions. The past few nights he's been waking every 1.5 hours, no joke. A few minutes of comfort feeding are all it takes to put him back to sleep, but he will wake within a few minutes of being set down and become a crying mess. I've tried rocking him in my arms for awhile to get him to sleep deeper, I've tried letting him co-sleep again, but if he is not in my arms or nursing, he won't stay asleep. I have never been so tired in my life. It's worse than when either kid was a newborn.
On the positive, we have been so blessed this week with the kindness of friends. Friends from church and other circles have brought us meals, and watched our children at the last minute. I am so thankful for the kindness of these friends to help us out, especially those that have dropped everything to help with childcare. M2 and P5 have been doing fairly well, and thankfully they are still too young to understand the seriousness of everything. M2 has been pretty cute when I mention the name "Daddy" she usually responds now by saying "sweep!" Which is her way of saying "sleep." She realizes that Daddy has been sleeping a lot. P5 has been his usual clingy self, and I am doing my best to give him time and attention.
There are still many more medical appointments and tests in the coming weeks, but hopefully things are on the upswing.
To end on a happy note, here is a lovely picture of our family from our recent Europe trip. I love this picture! We were all so happy and carefree at an outdoor cafe in Amsterdam.
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