Thank You For Your Concern

Fiorella had some complications
Because of blood-thinning medications
The story
Is gory
But now she's planning celebrations
All is well, appreciations

Yesterday's News

Fiorella had her eyelids lifted yesterday and already she can see so much better. Turns out those shadows that had been getting in her way were her eyelashes. Wish her happy healing!

Like Mother, Unlike Daughter

Whenever Fiorella's mother had to go in for surgery, she carefully explained to the medical crew that if she used vulgar language when she was under anesthesia, it was because she had been reading Steinbeck.

If Fiorella spouts vulgarities when she's under, she hopes someone will write them down so she can use them in a book.

Reflection

Fiorella went back and revised her poem from yesterday.  She's like that, a serial reviser--after all, anything worth doing is worth revising.  She's that way about herself too, always correcting or reforming..  Hence the heart surgery, the hip surgery, the plastic surgery, and the visits to the voice pathologist.

If only she could go back and revise her life.

Toting It Up

Yes, Fiorella has surgical scars.  There are two down her spine from back surgery and two down her stomach from C-sections.  There's one across her right palm from repair of a carpal tunnel problem and one under her right arm from a lymph-node biopsy.  There's one down her chest from an aortic valve replacement, one above her heart marking the insertion of a pacemaker, one across her throat from a partial thyroidectomy, one on her right thigh from a total hip replacement, and two in front of her hairline from a facelift.

Fiorella doesn't try to hide her scars.  They mean she's alive and well.

Bloody Battles

Fiorella is not happy with her coumadin nurse.

Because she has an artificial aortic valve, Fio takes a daily dose of coumadin/warfarin to thin her blood and thus keep her from forming a blood clot. The goal is to maintain her INR (a blood analysis figure) between 2 and 3.  But whenever she has surgery, Fio has to stop taking coumadin--usually five days beforehand because coumadin has a three-day bounce--to enable the wound to heal properly.

Starting the coumadin again afterwards is tricky.  After her facelift, Fio was started too soon with dosages that were too high and ended up with an INR of 3.9 and coagulated blood in her cheeks.   

Once burned, twice shy, Fiorella informed everyone involved in her hip replacement of the coumadin bounce problem before the hip surgery.  The surgeon emphasized he wanted her in the low 2s after the surgery.  But before Fio knew it, by following the dosages prescribed by the coumadin nurse, she was up to 3.4--and a second hematoma was forming.

She called the coumadin nurse, who was too busy to take her call.  She called the surgeon's office and was told to call her cardiologist.  She called the cardiologist's office and was told to call the coumadin nurse.  Finally she got hold of someone else in the coumadin nurse's office and was told what dosages to take. Four days later, she still high, at 3.1.  The remedy?--she was told to take high dosages five days a week and lower dosages twice a week, which is sure to send her up to 4 in no time.

Despite the temptation to go all passive aggressive and bleed out in an emergency room just to prove how wrong the nurse was, Fio's not going along with it the nurse's prescription.  She's putting herself on a reasonable dosage, then requesting copies of her records for the past two years so she can figure out her dosages for herself.

Over-ambitious Plans

Blithely overlooking such possibilities as pain, bad reactions to medications, and mental distress, Fio always plans to make good use of any medical down time.  Thus  she had decided to spend the week following her hip surgery putting together Wendy's book, a collection of blog posts about her wonderful Weimeraner who died right after Christmas last year, and getting re-started on Princess Redlander, which has been hanging fire while Fio finished up revisions to, uh, Honeysuckle Dreams.  After all, Colette wrote story after story in her sickbed, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning composed poem after poem in hers.  But apparently Fio is made of lesser stuff, because all she's done is whine.

 

Brief Report

Sorry to unload all this on you, but today was not good.  Was still having problems with hallucinations, but added painful indigestion to the mix.  Called the doctor's office and was told to discontinue all current pain medications. Two hours, four Tums, and one new pain med later, Fio is feeling better, but she's still not where she wants to be--or thought she'd be.  

Ups and Downs, Downs, Downs

Fiorella was not as happy last night as she was Saturday night.  In fact, she H-U-R-T, mainly because she was totally confused about her pain pills.  And because she was confused about them, or maybe because OF them, she had the night terrors again.  Not as bad as the previous night, but scary enough that she had to call Husband in to sit with her for a while.

So she spent the early morning working out a logical painkiller schedule she will check with the doctor's office when it opens up for business.  And she trailed into the kitchen and cut herself a piece of bread to take a bite of with each painkiller to avoid indigestion.  And she reread her exercise book and learned the ice pack is only supposed to be applied for twenty minutes after each exercise session, not all the time.

And she hopes all this information will help someone else who's contemplating hip replacement somewhere along the line.

Oh, and a caveat--those two big booklets Fio was given by the hospital, the ones she actually read and tried to remember the contents of--they're out of date.

Aftermath

Everything went smoothly in the hospital--the shots at 4 a.m., the blood pressure readings at regular intervals,  even the discharge.  But once Fiorella was on the her own, the situation went downhill.  Walgreen's wouldn't have enough oxycontin to fill Fio's prescription till Monday, Fiorella frazzled out trying to work set up a schedule for her pills, the home health nurse ran late--you name it.

Husband has now rushed off to the pharmacy while Fio awaits the coming of the physical therapist.  Pray he doesn't arrive too early.  Fio would hate to have to crawl to the door.

Multi-tasker

Fio has to pat herself on the back because she's a never-say-die kinda gal.  Sure, she has her ups and downs--and those downs can be twenty miles deep--but she's usually so sunny as to be irritating.  And she's always loaded with ideas--again, irritatingly so.  Those gallons of bath water she stored on the balcony last year in anticipation of the drought of the century this year are still there, probably breeding the killer bacteria of the century. 

Yeah, Fio is always into something and has a notebook full of back-up assignments to boot.  Right now she's racing to finish the final run-through of the former Princess of Bosque Bend, running laundry upstairs, and pondering how to handle this blog while she's incapacitated after the hip surgery on Wednesday.

Please wish her well.  On all counts.

Scheduled for October 17th

Think kindly toward Fio.  She's scheduled for hip surgery on October 17, and, from what she's read--in the 43-page and 50-page preparation manuals--the recovery is a bear.  But Fiorella would rather go through a grueling recovery than continue to hobble around like she does now, gulping down five half-hydrocodones by day and one in the middle of the night, often resorting to sleeping in the bathtub.

But afterwards she'll have to give up sitting on her comfortable cushioned couch while she writes or watched television.  And because she won't be allowed to use stairs for an unknown period, she'll have to sleep downstairs in the guest room.  And with the utility room upstairs, she won't be able to do laundry either. And all her cosmetics will have to be moved downstairs from the master bathroom.  And her clothes from the master closet.

On the other hand, Fio went through open heart surgery years ago and is all the better for it.  God bless modern medicine.

Facing the Future

Pray for Fiorella. She's scared, but she's going through with it--the surgery, that is.  You got it--she's getting a facelift today.  That passport photo was the final straw.

Wendy Dog in Crisis

Wendy Dog is going in for surgery today. She has a large mass in or near her spleen, but the vet can't tell for sure what it's connected to or if it's metastasized. Please think good thoughts in our direction this morning.

The only upside is that Fio and Husband have been getting a lot done around the house since Wendy's diagnosis. There's nothing like a crisis to stir up adrenaline.