Saturday, May 23, 2009

Quick update…

It’s been a while… So here’s the update as of now. My brother was taken back to the hospital on Saturday night around 11:30 pm. He was once again screaming in pain… At the ER they doctors drugged him up, and around 4 am they sent him home, this time with dilaudid pills that they were hoping would help. They seemed to work for a short period of time, about a day, then he was screaming again…

Monday morning rolls around and my mom is done. At this point he has been screaming in pain for a month, with little to no releaf. She took him in to Urgent care this time and they couldn’t get his pain back down, so they sent her, once again, to the ER. This time they must have called ahead because shortly after arriving, they admitted him. They ordered another MRI, multiple blood tests and an ecocardiogram. They still didn’t know what they were looking at. Finally the MRI was read and they said it lit up and was obviously discitis. 
For those of you who don’t know, discitis is an infection of the disc between the vertebrae in the spine. His is so severe that it is also affecting the vertebrae on either side of the disc. 
Anyway, we also heard a day or two later that they found bacteria in his blood. They weren’t sure what kind yet, but it was a step closer. They started giving him antibiotics as of yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon, they heard back that it is S aureus, so they changed his meds to be more specific. 
As of now they are testing his blood every two days until it is clear. Once his blood is clear, they will be implanting a PIC line in him and he will have a constant pump of antibiotics for around 6 weeks, possibly a little longer depending on how things go. Oh, a PIC line is basically a semi-perminant IV that he can come home with. 
So why did it take so darn long for them to figure this out? Well, according to the doctors, it takes a little bit of time to be readable on an MRI. Also, discitis is very very uncommon. Not only is it uncommon, but from what I have read when researching what it is online, there are only around 60 reported cases in the US of people suffering from discitis over the age of 10. It is more common in children, but essentially unheard of in adults. 
What’s going to happen? We have to do a major clean on the house since it has been pretty neglected the past month with all that has been going on before he can come home. He will remain in pain, at least for a little while, while the antibiotics start working, so he will still be on some major pain meds. After that, they can’t say he won’t have any back pain, but given he is only 18/19 years old, they think he will recover and be just fine. He should be able to go into the fire academy again nest spring since he will probably barely be off the meds by August and will not have had any physical therapy to rebuild the increadable amount of muscle mass he has lost through this. 
Finally! A light at the end of the tunnel! Off to the hospital to see him. 
Posted by mnkyluv085 at 00:44:32 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Life…

For those of you out there in the blog world who don’t know what has been happening in my life for the past week and a half, here’s a quick rundown. 


My brother was taken to the hospital for his back pain on Friday night around 6:30 and sent home with Vicodine and Valleum for the pain around 3am. It wasn’t working… He was still miserable. Saturday night, I think he woke up once and had really bad spasms for about ten minutes, but Sunday night was a thousand times worse. He woke up I think three times and was in so much pain because of the spasms all he could do was scream. We gave him both pills around 12, and tried to go to bed around 12:30, only to wake once again to his painful screams around 2:30. So Monday my mom decided to take him in to the doctors again. He was given stronger meds (about twice as strong) and sent home. Again, no relief. We gave him meds again around 12 on Monday night, tried to go to bed, and were up again at 2:30 with him screaming in pain. Finally he broke down around 10am. He was crying and just asking me when the pain will end. I was the only one home since Steph was at school and my mom was dealing with the other major issue that crept up, my dad.  Anyway, when my mom got home, she took him back into the ER and they ran a CT and an MRI. Both ended up coming back clean, so they went back to the idea of it being a really bad strained muscle. So, they kept him there until Thursday afternoon for managed major pain meds and observation. He has yet stronger pain meds and is home again. We’ll see how things go. As of now he’s mostly sleeping and not moving around too much.

Ok, on to my dad. Sunday he told us that the bottom half of his left eye was blocked by a black “blob”, inside. He had a detached retina in his left eye about 5 years ago, so he knew thats what it was. I took him in to an emergency eye appointment Monday morning where they told him that they were definitely going to have to do emergency surgery to repair it. They sent him straight to the surgeon thinking they could take him straight into surgery. Then the surgeon found out that they wanted to send him to Pomona Vally hospital for the surgery and he was a little worried because they hadn’t completed very many and weren’t as well equipt as well as Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.  So, he had to fight the insurance to get him into the hospital that has the best equipment for the job, which meant he had to wait until Tuesday. He went into his surgery Tuesday and they said it was as successful as it could be. They won’t know how well he can see for about 2 months, and for now he has to stay face down 100% until at least Monday when he goes back in for a follow-up. We’ll see what happens. 

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t so quick. Anyway, because of all of this I haven’t slept more than maybe 12-14 hours since last Sunday. I also skipped class Monday to take my dad in to see his doctor, have done no homework so I can do everything I can to help them both, have been doing my best to help clean house, run the shop, take care of the pool, and take care of the dogs (who don’t get what is going on), and have a huge presentation Monday morning. I’m so exhausted I can’t hardly see straight anymore. That’s my mental status right now.

I told them all I have to do this presentation today because I have no time left, but I’m still being told I’m not doing enough. My dad told me I need to do more to help my mom who now has swollen ankles from running around so much. I don’t know what else I can do… I feel like none of them seem to care about all I have already done and are simply focusing on the fact that I’m trying to do homework, which is stopping me from helping as much, and telling me I’m not doing good enough… I don’t know what to do… I have to go work on this presentation, which by the way, I seem to have writers block for… great… 
Posted by mnkyluv085 at 22:00:04 | Permalink | Comments (1) »