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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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Friday, February 23, 2018
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ON DECEMBER 1, R’s primary doctor said that the PET scan result revealed that his right lung was collapsed. Collapsed as in caved in? Passed out? Fell down? R already had difficulty breathing at that time. But he remained very stubborn. He continued to resist going to the hospital.
I cupped his face and asked him to look at me in the eye. And with all the seriousness and sternness that I could muster, I told him, “RTG, stop refusing. We need to go to the hospital.”
I explained to him, “If it’s just pain and broken bones, I will let you to stay in the house. I can deal with those. But, if you can no longer breathe, I cannot do anything. We don’t even have oxygen tanks in the house. And I don’t want you to die in my arms, with me totally helpless and unable to do anything. I am a nurse! I love you. And I cannot forgive myself, if I let you die in my care, when you have a good chance to be saved in a hospital!”
And he cried like a baby, and said, “Okay. But only because I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
At the Emergency Room of Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, a tube was inserted into R’s right lung in the morning of Dec. 2, 2014. In five hours, 1.5 liters of liquid and pus drained from the chest tube. When I converted it, it was 0.39 of a gallon, almost two bottles of his favorite Chardonnay.
He was admitted to the Intermediate Care Unit. His doctors said his condition wasn’t so critical to need an Intensive Care Unit. I took that as a good sign.
And then, the resident doctors started coming in — almost 14 in total during our whole hospital stay. I counted 11 specialists, and their covering physicians, who were also consulted in the case.
They took R in and out of the room for CT scan on the first floor, MRI on the second floor, et cetera. He also had x-rays done in the room. And almost every morning, and every evening, they drew his blood for laboratory tests. But nobody can say, for certain, what he had.
Probably infection, so they gave him antibiotics.
Or perhaps cancer? It looked like there’s a lump in his lung. And there was something that wouldn’t drain through the chest tube suction. There also seemed to be a mass around his coccyx, right on his spine. The doctors couldn’t be sure. So, they wanted to get into the lungs. R needed an invasive procedure. They said, he needed a surgery, and a surgical biopsy.
My first question was, “What are the chances that R will survive the operation? Especially when we consider his poor nutrition, and long history of alcohol abuse? The doctor responded that R and I really had no choice. If he didn’t undergo surgery, the infection would worsen. And they wouldn’t know what was that mass in his lung — the white thing that showed on the x-ray, that did not drain in the chest tube.
The Dec. 4 surgery was long, more than four hours. I was uneasy and very worried.
Ever since the year before, when I contemplated on my retirement, I repeatedly warned R to avoid falls because he was not likely to survive a major surgery like an orthopedic surgery. He ate like a bird, and drank wine like a thirsty elephant. How could his body sustain surgery, and recover from it? But I had never imagined a lung surgery. A lung surgery, imagine that!
When I saw R in the Recovery Room, my heart leapt for joy. He had three chest tubes now — instead of just the one from the ER. He was still mildly sedated, but he recognized me. I wanted to kiss him. But he was groggy, dazed, and faint. I was compliant to the nurses in the Recovery Room, so I left him to wait in the patient’s room.
At 2 p.m. on Dec. 7, they removed one of the three chest tubes. I had no confidence in the resident doctor who removed it. He and I had an argument earlier that day because he said he wasn’t going to give R a painkiller when he removes the tube. The young doctor explained, “Chest tube removal wouldn’t be painful. It’s much more painful to insert, than to remove, these tubes.”
Pissed, I couldn’t help but raised my voice, “With all due respect, Doctor, he was under general anesthesia when they placed the two additional chest tubes. And in the ER, he had a Toradol injection and a Fentanyl local anesthesia when they inserted the first!” (To be continued/PN)
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