More of the same

It's been a quiet day. Dan is very tired and not talking or doing much. He doesn't even care to listen to his ipod... I thought I'd never see the day! The gut still isn't working. A little more has passed into his ileo bag, though not much relative to the amount that comes out his NG tube.

His pain has been a none issue for at least the last 2 days. Each time they ask him, he answers, "other than the NG tube, about a 2 or 3" (on a scale of 10). The epidural that he has for pain is to help with the abdominal wall. His incision has healed beautifully. Everything really is going great, except for the fact that his gut just ain't working. Now this is expected, when they mess around in there it kind of paralyses those muscles for a while.

I got to thinking today, and a few things have added up to this thought. My mom was wondering why he's still on so much pain meds when he isn't in much pain. Dan's neighbor next door is all constipated due to the morphine he is on, a common side effect (they are putting morphine in through Dan's epidural). And it occurred to me that Dan had a lot of bowel sluggishness before with the anti nausea drugs back in Sept when he did a round of chemo. All this has lead me to think, what we're pumping in is causing this problem!

So the new plan... take the bull by the horns. Dan hasn't needed the nausea medicine all day so that is hopefully cleared out of his system. Also I got his nurse to turn down the pain medication tonight. We'll see how this goes. If the pain goes up too much, we can turn it back up. But maybe, JUST maybe it will help wake up the bowels!

Another IV line was added today too. That's 3 IV's, an epidural line, an NG tube, an ileo bag, a foley catheter, and each leg has inflating compressions on them (attached to a pump) to reduce risk of clots. If you're counting that's NINE things Dan's attached to.

My Valentine is resting very peacefully right now. Let's hope this lasts all night.

Penny.