A lot has happened these last few days, and each day seems to be a mix of varying results. Friday was a banner day with many celebratory steps. Todd hit some major milestones:
- he went down to one IV
- he was doing laps around the hallway without a walker
- his catheter came out
- he made the all important deposit into the account of Toilet USA
- we received good news about the tumor pathology
Then 6pm came around and Todd's epidural catheter completely failed. It's possible it came out too far from the point of origin, but either way, he wasn't receiving any pain medication after about 4pm. The scariest part was that with all the red tape, he did not receive any pain medicine until 9:30pm and didn't settle down until closer to 10:30pm.
Saturday, Todd's progress continued.
- he transitioned to foods and oral pain medicine
- he is off all IV drips (yeah!)
- he's able to wear his "street clothes"
- we should be able to go home Monday or Tuesday
While we've had a lot of progress, it seems to be two steps forward and one step back. The transition to oral medicine was rough, he threw up his first try with real food, his spirit was crushed after the disaster that was Friday night. In many ways, the new pain medicine feels like a few steps back as pain is now being felt in areas previously masked by the epidural.
Todd is strong in spirit, and he'll need to draw upon it as he begins to realize that surgery wasn't the end of the sentence - it was the start of a very long year of recovery.
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