Autobiography of an Author (Me)
Copyright© 2014 by Stepdad
Chapter 7: get ready - get set - wait
Today is September 30, 2014 and I am sitting at home going over the events of the last two days. You may remember that I mentioned my leaking feeding tube. Well, I went into the hospital to the special services department to meet with my surgeon's assistant. The plan was for her to replace my Mic-Key feeding tube since it has been in place for several months and we suspected it had a part in the leaking.
The tube I had in was an 18-French size. That's the diameter of the tube. We tossed around some alternatives and decided to go up to a 20-French unit. That should reduce the leakage some and if I am really lucky the leakage will be all but gone. The rest of the day the tube was leaking almost as bad as before we made the change.
I had supper and then changed the dressing and towel to get things dried out down there. This evening I have been drinking coke and as best I can determine the leaking has reduced. If that's the situation I have no earthly idea why. I guess I will see what's up when I change the dressing tomorrow morning.
Today I had an appointment to go in for another chemo treatment. I met with my oncologist's assistant for a follow-up after last week's treatment. In the course of our conversation I mentioned the problem with my feeding tube. She looked at the tube site and was concerned with the inflammation and suspected some infection. The chemo they were using can reduce the white blood count reducing the body's ability to fight infections. In light of that they decided to forego the treatment today and put it off for a couple of weeks. I went into the lab and had blood drawn to check the counts of red, white and platelets. Those seem to be significant when undergoing chemo treatment. Tomorrow I'm going to call in and have them send me the results of the labs.