My husband had his robotic surgery on Friday morning. What was supposed to be an overnight stay ended up being 3 nights. The doctor told me that he was "cautiously optimistic". He told me that he was able to spare both nerve bundles (good news) and he said that my husband's lymph nodes were very large but that didn't necessarily mean anything. He had seen large lymph nodes with no involvement and small ones totally involved. He said that we would have to wait for the pathology report to see how everything really is. He did tell us that he was curious to see the results because my husband's numbers and biopsy didn't match.
The first night my husband was sick from the anesthesia, dry heaving and finally throwing up water after we got some down him. I was afraid he was going to undo stitches inside him. He was finally able to sleep off the after effects of the anesthesia and awoke feeling fairly good. No pain and they kept him on a liquid diet for most of the day. There was talk of sending us home and then he had what they thought was a bladder spasm so they gave him some medicine. Through all of this, the drain that he had in his side wouldn't drain correctly and he ended up having huge pools of blood wherever he sat or walked. So they decided to keep him overnight to try and figure out the drain. Later that night I noticed that he had no output in his catheter. I brought it to the nurse's attention and she said we would keep an eye on it. about
15 minutes later my husband awoke, sweating, nauseous and complaining of pain in his lower regions. I rang the nurse and she came in and decided to irrigate his catheter. Turned out he had some huge clots blocking the way out. He immediately felt better. The nurse let the doctor know and he came in at midnight and again irrigated the catheter pulling out more clots along with lots of blood.
Next day, the blood work came back that my husband's blood count was lower than they liked and they were seriously considering a transfusion. So they decided to keep us again to keep an eye on his count. So blood draws every eight hours. Slowly the count rose. So now we are told we are going to be released from the hospital. But, once again, my husband's catheter stops draining so the nurse decides to irrigate it. She does and pulls out a few more clots and it starts working again, Remember that drain in his side that never worked? All of a sudden it decides to work and it is pulling out copious amounts of fluid, 1000cc in an hour. Turns out that the drain was now pulling urine from where the catheter should be working through a tear in a stitch. We know this because they did a creatine test on the stuff being pulled from the drain. They did one on Sunday and it was a 1. The one they did today was a 17. So now we have issues with the drain and the catheter and we are put on hold. They finally decide to take the drain bulb off and replace it with a bag like the catheter bag because they can't stop the fluid from coming out but they don't want the bulb to suck it out keeping the bladder stitching from healing.
So we are home tonight and both gun shy about
everything. Fear of more blood clots (because we have seen some passing through), fear that every pain in his belly is a blood clot clogging up the catheter, fear that the bladder will never heal because the drain is still draining lots of blood which I now have to empty and track. They are saying that they will pull both the drain and the catheter on Monday. But my question for all of you is have any of you experienced this? Will the clots subside or will we be irrigating this off and on until Monday (they sent us home with the irrigation stuff, but I am truly afraid to do this). Will the bladder heal and will the drain ever stop draining?
Sorry for the long story, but it seems it had to be told to get to the crux of the matter. Just need some words of wisdom from those of you who have lived it. My husband is having a terrible time relaxing, his balls are so black and blue and hurting so that it makes it difficult to get comfortable and then all of the fear of more clots. Just a vicious circle. Give me some words that I can use to make him settle down.
Thank you so very much.
Post Edited (AnnieW56) : 5/16/2016 11:56:42 PM (GMT-6)