Adjusting to a New Routine

The last 96 hours have been a blur. Shirley came "home" to her brother and sister-in-laws house Monday night.  Since that time, we've been adjusting to a new schedule dictated by scheduled pill taking and measurements of vital signs.

Shirley hasn't had much of an appetite and suspects some kind of gastrointestinal cause. She has an appointment next Wednesday to try and figure you what is ailing her gut.  In the meantime, much of her available appetite has gone to the 25 pills she takes each morning; the 2 a lunch time, the 11 at dinner and 14 at bed time.  And these don't count the pain medication that she takes up to every three hours depending on how things are going.

Each morning, we weigh her, take her temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and she blows into a micro spirometer, which measures her lung capacity.  All these measurements (less weight) are done again each night and recorded into a log book to assure we spot any anomalies that might suggest infection or rejection.

And because the massive dose of predisone she was given pre-surgery triggers temporary (hopefully) diabetes, she is also poking her finger to do blood glucose measurements four times daily.  About half the time, her levels are just high enough that she needs a small does of insulin,  We are hopeful that as the predinsone is tapered off that this is something that will go away too.

Much like the first-time parents of a newborn, we are often uncertain if some change in vital signs or in how Shirley feels is insignificant or life threatening, so there have been several calls to the post-transplant team.  Some have ended with assurances or suggestions of increasing doses of existing drugs. Others have sent us back to the pharmacy for more pills.  Last night they suggested a chest x-ray, which in turn this morning yielded a request for a CT scan.  Now she is on diuretics to try and slow down the fluid build up within her chest cavity (which then leaks out of her incision line).

They did today pull out half the incision staples and gave her a clean bill of health in terms of the wound healing as it should.