By: Ann
We’re so behind in our posts. I think we’re almost 3 months behind. Lots of things have been happening. If you follow us on facebook, then you’re probably already aware of everything that went on. But let’s do a recap. We’ll start from around March 6, 2010. Grab a chair and your drink of choice. You’ll be here for a while.
The weekend after Ryan came to visit us, my brother Ahan, sister-in-law Julie, and baby niece Alia came to visit. They currently live in Medford, Oregon. We went to go visit them in February for a long weekend which was great. They arrived Saturday afternoon and Athena was pretty excited to see another baby around. She felt pretty proud that she wasn’t the youngest one anymore.
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Auntie and Uncle were generous enough to offer to watch Athena that Saturday night while Jason and I went out for a few hours. One of Jason’s coworkers Sandy was having a birthday party, and we kind of wanted to make a quick appearance. However, Jason wasn’t feeling well that evening (the first night of the gallbladder drama). So we decided against going out.
The next day we did a good amount of hanging out at the house watching the kids play (Athena being as gentle as she could…she really doesn’t know her own strength). We ordered in some Jamaican food from Coconuts, since Jason was still not feeling well and we couldn’t get the babies to be up at the same time for an extended period of time. We also did some webcamming with Nonny and Grandpa in DC. Alia looks so totally different now. She’s such an angel baby.
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The next day, Julie and Alia met with some of her local friends. Ahan was supposed to meet up with her later. I think Uncle Ahan wanted a little more Athena time which was great. Jason admitted to feeling better in the morning and off he went to work. We planned on meeting Jason later on in the afternoon for a Google lunch.
When we were having lunch with Jason, I noticed that his eyes were yellow. I first thought that maybe it was the lighting because I had never been to this particular cafe before. But then I looked at my brother’s eyes, and they were definitely not yellow. It was then that I told Jason that he needed to see a doctor that day because something was going on with his liver. Ahan and I kind of gave Jason no choice in the matter. He felt fine, but jaundice is unacceptable in my book.
Uncle Ahan was nice enough to watch Athena for a few hours while I took Jason to the doctor’s appointment. A slew of tests were done to rule out any horrible liver disease and appointments were made for STAT gastroenterology (GI) appointments and an ultrasound.
When we got back from the doctor’s office, Athena was still asleep. So my brother met Julie and Alia up in the East Bay for some good times with friends.
Tuesday morning, the Oregon Newmans left. I feel bad that all of this was going on during their visit. However, I guess it was pretty much equal to when we visited them in Oregon. My brother (a pediatrician) was on-call all weekend. So we were not able to do much or go very far. However, I’m usually pretty happy just visiting with family. I never need to have much on the agenda. Seeing my family is pretty much activity enough for me.
Returning to the gallbladder drama, Jason had a GI appointment later that day. Between the symptoms that Jason was having off and on for months now (which progressively got much worse the previous weekend) and Jason’s family history, the doctor was half-convinced that Jason had gallstones. You see, the symptoms usually present much more severe and in people who eat fatty, horrible foods, which is not the case with Jason.
I have to admit that I was pretty scared at this point. I was kicking myself for not nagging Jason even more for getting his yearly check-up. Don’t get me wrong, I did my fair share of nagging. But I felt this could have all been avoided if I was just a little more persistent with him. Jason is very good at what he does at Google, but, unfortunately, he doesn’t take time to breath and take care of himself. I will never again take the attitude of “If it ain’t broke…”
I was really hoping and praying for gallstones, because that would be the lesser of all the evils that were floating around in my little nurse practitioner brain. A battery of even more tests was run to continue ruling out horrible liver diseases.
Jason had an ultrasound that same day, which did illustrate gallstones in his gallbladder. I was pretty happy at this point. On Thursday, Jason had a special MRI in order to rule out gallstones in the common bile duct. The test did show gallstones in the common bile duct. So, from that day, we had scheduled 2 surgeries: 1) and ERCP, and a 2) laparoscopic cholycystectomy (gallbladder removal) for the following Tuesday and Friday.
So, for the next couple of days we took to eating very light and healthy for fear of ending up in the emergency room. I know some of you may think that we may already eat like rabbits with my vegetarian lifestyle and such, but these next few days were especially healthy.
Things were going really well. We even went out to eat with Jason’s cousin Kurt and his girlfriend out to a sushi bar (having vegetarian sushi). Jason had some mild discomfort after dinner, but he ate much more than he was normally eating this week.
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The next day was Sunday. We had a great afternoon at Rancho San Antonio Deer Hollow Farm. The 1 mile walk to and back was a little more than I would have wanted for Jason, but he said he was okay. When we had returned home, we webcammed with our friends Ryan, Jessi, and Asher. I could tell that he was starting not to feel well. Things went downhill from there.
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Each hour that went by, Jason’s pain became worse. I finally called the on-call doctor at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, who directed us to the Stanford ER. I told Jason to take a shower because I knew this wasn’t going to be a quick ER visit. While Jason was taking a shower, I made arrangements for Athena to spend the night at her daycare provider’s house. We’re so grateful for Miss Murie. She’s so great with Athena. We really don’t have many people to call in the area to take care of Athena, so she was definitely a lifesaver.
By the time we arrived to the ER, Jason was in excruciating pain. I’ve never seen him in this much pain before. I had to put my nursing cap on instead of my wife cap, because if I didn’t, I would have been a blubbering mess shouting orders at the nurses and doctors to do something.
It’s really funny, hospitals…They make the actual patient register for his/her stay. Jason kept on asking, “Can’t my wife fill this out? She is the power of attorney. I’m really in a lot of pain.” I felt that they just wanted his signature without caring if he fully understood everything that he was signing. I know I probably shouldn’t say this about my current employer, but I was a little disappointed in the whole process. We both asked her if Jason looked like he was in any condition to be signing the documents, and she uncomfortably smiled and said, “Well, if you’re (being me) the power of attorney, I guess you can sign this one, but he has to sign one more” (shoving another document on Jason’s lap, since he was wheelchair-bound at this point).
It was about an hour that passed by until we finally made it to a room with a bed. He didn’t have a nurse, yet. I was asking anyone who would listen for warm blankets because he was having uncontrollable chills which wasn’t helping much with his pain level.
The nurse finally came in, followed by the lab technician to draw blood and start an IV. It was almost comical the way they were bantering back and forth as to who was going to poke him. The doctor looked at me uncomfortably trying to hide his laugh and he knew I knew what was going on. I just wanted to scream, “Everyone get over your laziness and just start the IV already! He’s begging for pain meds!” But, I chose to help and not hinder the situation. It would have looked bad if I got kicked out my future employer’s institution due to threatening the doctors and nurses.
After they gave Jason the dilaudid (IV pain med), Jason’s pain slowly but surely subsided and I started to relax. After that, everything was a blur for me. I didn’t get any sleep that night. I gladly helped Jason with whatever he needed because the nurses were highly inattentive.
Jason’s first procedure, the ERCP, was the following morning. They had to urgently put a stent in his common bile duct because he woke up prematurely and was a little combative. This is pretty normal for kids and for people’s systems that are really clean.
Jason’s parents flew in that evening. During Jason’s hospital stay, I stayed with him overnight while Jason’s parents stayed with Athena at home. It was a really big help to have them here. If this was all outpatient, as it was supposed to be, I think we would have been able to handle it. But, I didn’t want to leave Jason at the hospital all by himself or Athena with Miss Murie for the whole week. I wanted her to be home in her own surroundings. It was bad enough her dad wasn’t around. We’re really grateful to Grammy and Grandpa in Cleveland.
The next day was the gallbladder removal surgery. I was a little nervous about this due to the doctor saying that the two surgeries so close together was a little dangerous if his pancreatic enzymes were high…which they were. But the doctor gave me reassurance that everything was going to be okay…which it was. Jason was discharged the next day.
Jason wasn’t able to lift Athena for a few weeks, which Athena didn’t understand. So this was very hard on both Jason and Athena. She finally settled for her mama, but I knew that she was really missing her daddy.
After all of the gallbladder drama, we were scheduled to move in two weeks. Jason still was recovering from surgery, so no heavy lifting. I ended up packing the majority of our belongings in many boxes and hiring a moving company suggested by my brother Ahan. Jason’s brother was nice enough to fly in again and help us unpack, child-proof, and move heavy things into place. He also helped me clean our old place. He’s probably the best brother-in-law ever, but don’t tell him I said that.
Moving and unpacking was not the best way to spend my birthday, but I was just grateful no one was in the hospital.
I think this catches us up now. Oh, the following week after we moved, I started my new job at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital Otolaryngology Clinic. To all of you who don’t know, this is Stanford’s Children’s hospital. I’m liking it a lot. I feel like a nursing student all over again, but I’m getting the hang of things slowly, but surely.
Yeah, when Jason and I do change, we really do change.
Jason went to Ireland about three weeks after the move, as you can see from our previous post. He was there for 2 weeks for business and then I joined him for a little less than a week while Athena stayed in California with her grandparents and Auntie Linda.
You can check out some of my pictures on Picasa. Ireland was great, but I don’t think I’m going to do this again anytime soon (being oceans apart from my little girl). I think a much more manageable trip might be our next one to southwestern Ohio for our friends’ wedding while Athena stays with her Nonny and Grandpa in DC. I’m very happy that Jason and I had some couple time, but I think I would have had a better time if our Athena was there, even if she wouldn’t remember the trip at all. We just have to get over her eating issues one day at a time, though.
Last week, I received the nicest surprise during my lunch hour. It was Ahan, Julie, and Alia!
This picture doesn’t do Alia justice since it’s a little blurry (taken with my iPhone). She’s such a pleasant baby with the prettiest gray(?) eyes that I think may turn to hazel. I’m told that her eye color changes a lot. She’s currently almost 5 months old now.
Okay. That’s all for now. Jason has been symptom-free since the surgeries. He now has to have the stent removed out of his common bile duct on Monday, June 7. Hopefully we’ll be done with all of this stuff after that. Please send good wishes our way on Monday.
