The Grout Is Back

I forgot to post this one on Friday night...so read it like its Friday night:)

Last night when we got back to Derrek's room after visiting Chris, Derrek was WIPED out. His stomach was still full of pressure (even though he took a walk with Chris) and his incisions were sore. He'd been fighting the gas pressure for about 10 hours and felt like he could have walked miles without it helping. Then when we got back to the room he started feeling nauseous because he was using some morphine to try to get more comfortable. So, I asked the nurse for some Phenegran in his IV. As soon as she put it in the tube, his IV started burning in his arm. Not in the vein just locally in his arm. So, either the vein had worn out or the needle had moved but they had to completely start over on the IV. It was such a long day for poor D.



Unfortunately, another day has come and almost gone and Derrek's run of bad luck continued.

The morning was actually okay again. The gas pains had subsided quite a bit and his incision wasn't sore like he thought it was the day before. He used a little bit of morphine to sleep through the night. I ran to Patti's (Chris's mom) hotel room with Wanda to take showers and get some breakfast. While I was gone, tough guy decided to take a walk by himself and it was pretty hard on him. That's when he started noticing the gout was creeping back into his knee. When I got back he was pretty tired again but it was still much better than yesterday.



Around lunch time, my dad, Sandy (stepmom), and Kay (my aunt) came to visit for a while. Derrek was in good spirits but I could tell the gout pain was getting worse. I left with the others to grab some lunch and when I got back I had missed Dr. Vick! He told Derrek he could go home if he wanted (Derrek asked to stay because he's just still so uncomfortable). I wish this had been a sign for the dr. to give him some sort of exam or probe with more questions but he didn't. Just told him to stay and get some rest. But he instructed the nurses to take out his IV. I'm not sure why it makes me so uncomfortable but it does and I'm just a worry wart and I feel like no one really listened yesterday. Anyway, about an hour after they took out the IV, they came and checked his vitals and now he had a low-grade fever (100.1 then, last time they checked it was 100.5). A nurse came in and said he needed to do his breathing exercises to help get the fever down. Then the gout kicked in. It kicked in fast and hard. Hopefully we can get some pain medication soon.