Of course, Kathie's x-ray did not show up until 9 AM (scheduled for 7:30)... oh hospital time - it's not an emergency until it's an emergency. She slept most of the night - only waking here and there. Lauren was super paranoid that she was going to pull at her catheter. Not much more fluid drained overnight. From the time she came back from the procedure until the time they came to do her x-ray, she only had about 1/5 of a liter drain.
She drank some hot chocolate for breakfast - about the time the x-ray should have been there. grrr. Anyway, the x-ray showed no change, the lung had not re-expanded and the fluid was draining so slowly it was clear that it was not going to happen anytime soon. The doctor came in and said that she could be released. It was not until after noon that they were finally ready to give her some morphine for the trip home, take out her IV and cap the catheter. Lauren pulled around the car, and around 1 Kathie finally got downstairs in the wheelchair. Kathie was clearly in some pain and seemed fearful of anyone moving her into the car.
Two valets saw that we were having trouble and offered a "slider" to help get her in. This probably would have been helpful, but in the end, it worked out tragically. We had her half situated on the slider... which is basically a board with a round seat that can slide from one side to the other... so you can stick it under someone sitting in a wheelchair and the board balances between the wheelchair and another seat (in this case, the care front seat). They began to slide her over when she started to yelp in pain... the catheter tube had been caught in the wheelchair - moving her caused it to pull out about 6 inches.
Bob and Lauren's distress was more than a little high, as it was very apparent that something had gone wrong - Kathie was quickly soaked with fluid and was rushed back up to her room. For hours that morning, she had been begging them to get her out of the hospital, and there everyone was, back at square one - except in worse shape. An x-ray was immediately ordered to see where the tube was and wasn't and to determine the next step.
Kathie was offered two choices: 1) remove the tube... period or 2) remove the old tube and put in a new one. The existing tube was off some sort of track, so had to be removed either way. Kathie made it clear she did not want another tube in. Since some fluid had been drained, there was fear that the lung could collapse further, so they wanted her to stay overnight. Again, you can guess how little anyone was interested in that. After some discussion with doctors, including the ones that removed the old tube - it was decided that it was safe enough to take her home, as long as if she started having noticeable breathing changes that she was taken to the nearest hospital to have another tube put in to release some air.
An ambulance took her back to the house around 5. Kathie seems to be very happy to be back at home and Bob is sleeping in her room tonight to make sure she's okay. Everyone was slightly on edge today. It is very tempting to look at hindsight in this matter - but at the end of the day, Kathie wanted to do the procedure, and there was no way to know whether it would work one way or the other. It did not work, maintaining Kathie's poor habit of being in the low percentage of outcomes... but everyone had hope that it would relieve some of the trouble she has had breathing. Unfortunately, that did not happen - and many mishaps happened along the way - but she is back home now, and hopefully has some time left to spend at peace, out of the chaos of the hospital, with her family.
That being said, Lauren is (unhappily) heading back to school for about a week to catch back up on some work and get things organized so she can better work out of North Carolina for whatever time is necessary. Eddie will be coming back to the house tomorrow night and Lynette returns on Saturday. Updates may be a little slow during the transitions, but will be kept up as best as possible.
Bob has extra help with his brother, Richard and his wife, Mary Ann, for a few days.
We've been a little tardy in our thanks to Eddie's work friends again who supplied us with more delicious meals!
Posted by Lauren
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