Why is it...

... that things have a tendency to get worse before they get better? Or that when they do change it's not exactly the direction you were hoping to go?

This is kind of where we find ourselves right now... and this is how it breaks down. Before I get into that... I want to say something.

"God... if you're reading... we're good... we have all that we can handle and then some... and it's a gross over estimation in what we can handle... as a matter of fact you can pass all these "life enriching events/activities to someone else" or change them even to bring us some uplifting news once and a while" Thank-You

Emmah's back pain (if nothing else) is persistent and for the moment no amount of morphine (least not a dose they've tried yet) seems to be helping. So that got ME thinking... I know that is shocking to some... me thinking, but what else is there to do to whittle away the hours sitting in the hospital? I'm sure that they (the doctors) are thinking too, but they're thinking for a bunch of kids... I'm thinking of just one here.

Here's what I've come up with...

We came here on Monday with Emmah in pain in essentially the high groin area... where the leg meets the torso... right in that fold and not so much back pain. The main complaint was indeed the right groin. Now... we have the primary area of pain being her back. This is what I know... when we got here to our room, they started her on a continual morphine drip. Among the many side effects of morphine is retention. So we've got fluids going in... we've got weight gain in spite of her not eating... we've got her sitting trying to void for hours on end... we have her with the sensation of having to void. Ironically we have an increase in back pain since being on the morphine to go along with the inability to void.

Let me first say that you couldn't pay me enough to be in the medical field... I would not want to have anything to do with being a doctor or a nurse. I do believe that there are very good doctors and nurses, but... not one of them (no matter how good they are) is clairvoyant. With that "fault" if you will comes the realization they are human and as such are vulnerable to the same inadequacies that we all have. I am not a doctor, but I can analyze things just as well as they can... sometimes better I feel.

• So we got an increase in back pain since being on the morphine.
• We've got the morphine essentially being useless in controlling the pain.
• We've got a known that morphine causes retention.
• We've got weight gain since the beginning of the week with no real food going in.
• We've got the sensation of having to void without the voiding itself... see retention.
• We have them twice giving her lasix (a diuretic) to help get out the fluids.
• I know that she's so drugged up that when she sleeps she needs oxygen otherwise she will destat and oxygen levels drop off.
• We have one good kidney and one kidney that is damaged goods... but no problems with kidney function thus far.
  

So last night I inquired about her back pain and I told them MY thoughts... the first year residences love us.

I was thinking that maybe it's time to put in a catheter and get the fluids to drain out. See, the way I was looking at it is we have the morphine causing retention, we have retention causing (I suspect) discomfort. We have discomfort causing the need for pain medicine... pain medicine that isn't doing anything. A vicious cycle if there ever was one.

They thought that Emmah's pain med needed to be turned up so that she would receive more.

Hmmmm...

So let me get this straight, we're going to give her a higher dose of morphine first keeping the retention problem going strong before trying to relieve the pressure at the dam.

Okay, I started this post the other day and I will update where we are now... now.

Not too much has changed, but this is where we sit as I tap this out.

She's still complaining of back pain. She's off the morphine and there's been an increase in the lasix and a decrease in the fluids being given now that she's done with the chemo having finished that last night. They raised the dosage on the fentanyl patch and they have started her on methadone by mouth and have raised that dose as well already. She also has been requesting ativan and benadryl and she's still on dilaudid. Talk about perpetual stupor.

It's a matter of "troubleshooting" Emmah and finding some combination that works.

That's it for now...

KEIYTAP