It’s been five days since my last medical update, but mostly that was because there was nothing to report for most of it. It was in the last 48 hours, though, that something remarkable happened.
For the past three weeks, give or take a day, the stomach pump has been registering approximately 2400ml of bile a day. The average human being produces about two liters of digestive fluids every day, so basically everything my body was producing to try and digest food was, instead, trying to digest my stomach, and the stomach pump was sucking it all out of me. We’ve had a couple of ups and downs, days when the amount coming out dipped– 1800ml, then 2400ml, then 1100ml, but then 1200ml the next day.
Two days ago, it dropped to 525ml. That was enough the surgeon decided to remove me from the stomach pump and instead put me on a “gravity bag,” which basically hooks the tube leading into my stomach into plastic box dangling down by the floor to catch any overflow. Over the course of yesterday, we monitored that box closely, and by the end of the day it had registered only 125ml of fluid.
This morning around 10am my doctor came by and said, “Good enough. Let’s pull the stomach pump tube out of you.” I was like, what, now? “Sure. It’s simple. It just comes right out.” He grabbed some paper towels, reached for the heavy tube dangling from my right nostril, and said, “Ready?”
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
He started to pull. It was the single most uncomfortable, gagging, and disgusting thing I’ve felt yet as this six millimeter-wide pipe, 70 centimeters long, was dragged out of my esophagus, past my gag reflex and my sinuses. And then, suddenly, I was free of the stomach pump. I still have the other tube, the feeding tube, which is only about two millimeters across, in the other nostril, but it’s much smaller and my esophagus is much less crowded. It no longer hurts like someone continually stabbing me in the throat; it only feels that way now when I swallow. He pointed to it and said, “We’re going to leave that one in so you can keep getting nutrition. If you have no distress by six tonight, I’ll let you have some ice water. If you keep that down, we’ll try a clear liquids diet tomorrow.”
I can’t tell you how much relief I felt. I was also a little disappointed; I thought that if the digestive fluids were going down the right way, surely I could have the water now, but no, he wanted to wait. I agreed, reluctantly, that he was probably right. I felt great afterwards; I did laps around the floor, ten in total, and I took my first unchaperoned shower in three weeks. I looked forward to ice water that evening. Out of such little things are hope constructed.
Fate had other plans.
Around 1pm I went back to my room and noticed that the bag of nutritional pap was about empty. The alarm went off, saying that it needed to be changed and I notified the floor nurse. “I’ll have someone come change it.” The “help required” light above my door went out. But somehow, the order to change my feed bag must have gotten lost, because it wasn’t until 45 minutes had passed that the nurse showed up. Like last time, 45 minutes was too long. The feed must be kept in constant motion, or the line must be flushed with water, and if neither happens the stuff hardens to concrete in the feed line. My tube was clogged again.
The order came down at 3pm: “Let him have the water now. If he’s not nauseous at 6pm, let him have clear fluids today.”
As I write this, it’s been two hours since I had 250ml of chicken broth and 50ml of cranberry juice, along with the promised 250ml of ice water, of which I’ve only drunk about a third. My insides are busily gurgling away, and not in just that one spot above my liver where the bile ducts work, but all along the first traversal of the duodenum. It’s too early to tell– a bile reflux cycle is about six to eight hours– but those noises and the fact that I’m pissing comparable volumes says everything is moving in the right direction and my duodenum is finally open for business. It may still be under renovation, and there may still be restrictions on how fast stuff can move through, but if I don’t have any nausea by midnight, if I make it through the night, they’re pulling the feed tube tomorrow.
I can’t wait. I can survive a diet of old-people protein shakes for a few days as the last of hematoma clears and I’m slowly restored to my original health. There was no surgery, and while it felt like “slowly, and then suddenly,” there’s still a long road to full recovery. Still, it’s nice to actually be on that road.
For the past three weeks, give or take a day, the stomach pump has been registering approximately 2400ml of bile a day. The average human being produces about two liters of digestive fluids every day, so basically everything my body was producing to try and digest food was, instead, trying to digest my stomach, and the stomach pump was sucking it all out of me. We’ve had a couple of ups and downs, days when the amount coming out dipped– 1800ml, then 2400ml, then 1100ml, but then 1200ml the next day.
Two days ago, it dropped to 525ml. That was enough the surgeon decided to remove me from the stomach pump and instead put me on a “gravity bag,” which basically hooks the tube leading into my stomach into plastic box dangling down by the floor to catch any overflow. Over the course of yesterday, we monitored that box closely, and by the end of the day it had registered only 125ml of fluid.
This morning around 10am my doctor came by and said, “Good enough. Let’s pull the stomach pump tube out of you.” I was like, what, now? “Sure. It’s simple. It just comes right out.” He grabbed some paper towels, reached for the heavy tube dangling from my right nostril, and said, “Ready?”
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
He started to pull. It was the single most uncomfortable, gagging, and disgusting thing I’ve felt yet as this six millimeter-wide pipe, 70 centimeters long, was dragged out of my esophagus, past my gag reflex and my sinuses. And then, suddenly, I was free of the stomach pump. I still have the other tube, the feeding tube, which is only about two millimeters across, in the other nostril, but it’s much smaller and my esophagus is much less crowded. It no longer hurts like someone continually stabbing me in the throat; it only feels that way now when I swallow. He pointed to it and said, “We’re going to leave that one in so you can keep getting nutrition. If you have no distress by six tonight, I’ll let you have some ice water. If you keep that down, we’ll try a clear liquids diet tomorrow.”
I can’t tell you how much relief I felt. I was also a little disappointed; I thought that if the digestive fluids were going down the right way, surely I could have the water now, but no, he wanted to wait. I agreed, reluctantly, that he was probably right. I felt great afterwards; I did laps around the floor, ten in total, and I took my first unchaperoned shower in three weeks. I looked forward to ice water that evening. Out of such little things are hope constructed.
Fate had other plans.
Around 1pm I went back to my room and noticed that the bag of nutritional pap was about empty. The alarm went off, saying that it needed to be changed and I notified the floor nurse. “I’ll have someone come change it.” The “help required” light above my door went out. But somehow, the order to change my feed bag must have gotten lost, because it wasn’t until 45 minutes had passed that the nurse showed up. Like last time, 45 minutes was too long. The feed must be kept in constant motion, or the line must be flushed with water, and if neither happens the stuff hardens to concrete in the feed line. My tube was clogged again.
The order came down at 3pm: “Let him have the water now. If he’s not nauseous at 6pm, let him have clear fluids today.”
As I write this, it’s been two hours since I had 250ml of chicken broth and 50ml of cranberry juice, along with the promised 250ml of ice water, of which I’ve only drunk about a third. My insides are busily gurgling away, and not in just that one spot above my liver where the bile ducts work, but all along the first traversal of the duodenum. It’s too early to tell– a bile reflux cycle is about six to eight hours– but those noises and the fact that I’m pissing comparable volumes says everything is moving in the right direction and my duodenum is finally open for business. It may still be under renovation, and there may still be restrictions on how fast stuff can move through, but if I don’t have any nausea by midnight, if I make it through the night, they’re pulling the feed tube tomorrow.
I can’t wait. I can survive a diet of old-people protein shakes for a few days as the last of hematoma clears and I’m slowly restored to my original health. There was no surgery, and while it felt like “slowly, and then suddenly,” there’s still a long road to full recovery. Still, it’s nice to actually be on that road.
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