Catching up on the "Kendra Chase"

Kendra suffered a set back on Saturday night, we ended up back at the ER at WRAMC.  Here is the letter I sent to her dad to let him know what happened.

11/12/06

3:54 AM our time we got home.

 

So.... it all ends well...

 

Apparently the lack of draining urine from the SP tube was because it was blocked with mucus.  By the time we arrived at the hospital the tube was draining again.  E.R. took a bit of time getting us checked in, but once Dr. Whitman (from the urology group) came by, things kind of sped up a bit.  He thought the problem was infection at the incision site, but wanted to have Dr. Osborne look at it before he removed the staples. 

 

Dr. Osborne arrived and irrigated the tube, discovering the blockage and we really got the tube draining well after that.  So my instructions have changed for irrigating her here at home. Then when Dr. Osborne checked the staples, he felt they were fine... definitely not bad enough to remove them, but again I got MUCH BETTER instruction on what to watch for while with the doctors this time.

 

At any rate, we are home, she is feeling 100 percent better now that the blockage is gone, and we are ready to go forward again with recovery.  Also, the doctors gave me a staple remover kit "just in case"... but not so that I can do it.. but if they do end up becoming infected I can take her to St. Mary's ER and they can remove the staples using this kit.  :)  I think we are good, now that we got the obligatory ER visit through. 

 

Yesterday, Kendra had her follow up appointment with Dr. Cartwright.  Everything looked great. She removed the staples from the incision site.  X-rays were taken and it looked like a small fragment of a stone had been left behind.  So they did a quick scope through the SP tube site, but were unable to find the fragment.  I did get a great view of the inside of Kendra's bladder though and everything looked so healthy and pink.  No need to worry anymore (for now) about Bladder Cancer.

 

The doctors wanted to be sure that the fragment was indeed NOT in the bladder so we were sent to CT for a scan.  The final conclusion... this thing they thought was a fragment is a calcification within her body cavity, probably due to a previous surgery.  But it is NOT a stone nor fragment in the bladder.  This is good news.

 

So... after a seriously long day at WRAMC (from 5:30 am when we left the house until 7:50pm when we got back home), Kendra is without staples, without the SP tube, free of bladder stones and ready to make a full recovery.  I'm trying to convince her to go back to school next week... but I am respecting her boundaries on this.

 

I wish I could say that everything yesterday was "easy-cheesy", but the scoping of her bladder gave Kendra a lot of discomfort and she was so tense during it all.  But she did let the doctors get everything done that needed to be done.  I'm very proud of how she handled it all.

 

And at this point, we can take a break from the doctors until she's ready for her next surgery sometime AFTER Paul joins us here.