I love a doctor who is willing to think outside of his "specialty" box. When the ER doctor found the stomach obstruction, he called a surgeon. The surgeon started looking at clues more like a "medical doctor than a surgeon" (his words!) Very low sodium, high potassium, low BP, and others I don't recall...all these clues pointed him to an adrenal crisis, which can cause stomach obstruction among other things. Surgery is not the treatment in that case.
In Mom's fragile state, I'm not sure she could survive surgery right now, so this option definitely seems more workable to me. Right now, they are still pumping out the stomach contents (yuck, I know!) and are feeding her intravenously. One bottle she gets every day: I think it's dextrose- it looks like regular lemon-lime gatorade. Another bottle she'll get every 3 days: it looks like milk and is lipids-fats & stuff.
Here's my question for any medical folks out there: Since she had a this obstruction, was she really getting any of the drugs that she's been taking for the past several weeks or are they also being pumped out with everything else? I don't know how drugs are absorbed into your system. If she wasn't really "getting" these drugs, then she has gone "cold turkey" off the steroids not once but twice. That scares me.
While I have the least medical knowledge of your medical friends, generally medicine is absorbed before a type of bowel obstruction would come into play.
ReplyDeleteSo the drugs she took should have been absorbed. So you s houldnt worry about her being taken off steroids twice.
Will miss you tonight.
I agree, especially if her meds were being crushed. Don't sweat that one, dear. There are bigger things to concentrate on. Focus on the here and now-can't change the past anyway.
ReplyDeleteHugs to you, dear, and wish you could be here tonight. I will take lots of pics!
~:>
Your Mom is lucky to have you to worry about all of these details.
ReplyDeleteClucky and Blogger have pretty much answered the question, but even with the "obstruction" many things were still being absorbed, including medications, in the stomach or upper intestine if contents made it there.
ReplyDeleteTake care of yourself and hopefully you can trust that your mom is in good hands. Her meds will get straightened out, but first she needs to recover from her obstruction.
Thanks, guys.
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