Dad was up in the chair yesterday and walked both with me and the nurse and also the Physical Therapist the internist ordered. We had walked 2 more times before I left my overnight "shift" to come home for a little rest.
The urologist came in this morning and told Dad that the abdominal x-ray he took yesterday apparently looked the same as the one from the day before (although he admitted he hadn't seen it but had talked to the general surgeon he called in on the case --the one who is out of town this weekend. Guess he called him long distance!) He thinks it is an ileus, but when he talks to my father, the possibility of bowel obstruction in always brought up and with it, how awful the surgery is, especially for someone his age. He never apologizes for putting Dad through all this hell, as that would be admitting he SCREWED UP!
He ordered a CT scan with contrast and a gasograftin (or something like that to determine gas location) for Monday, so Dad has the rest of the weekend to worry about what is causing this problem. He has not passed any gas or moved his bowels since Thursday. Dad looks physically as if he has given up. He told me he just wants to take everything out and go home. He thinks prisoners of war are not tortured this much! I tend to agree.
My brother went into the hall with the "stellar" urologist and asked him if he couldn't just say ONE POSITIVE THING to my father when he visits. Maybe "your lab work looks good." Or, "your pelvic drain is doing just what we want it to."? The uro said he would not give false hope nor lie to Dad. Fine, we didn't ask him to. Maybe it will turn out to be a bowel obstruction. If so, there's plenty of time to get Dad upset then. Now he has to think about all this over the weekend while his doctors travel the world! I asked the uro if we couldn't give the ileum more time to resolve on its own since Dad his hooked up to an NG tube and the pelvic drain is working. He said we could but didn't want to wait too long. Also, the NG suction is sucking a lot of gas from the stomach. Why not pinch off the NG tube and let his own stomach take over to get rid of the gas? The uro didn't like my idea and said we would continue with the same plan (which is NOT working, by the way.)
Dad is talking about just pulling out all the drains and tubes and going home. He is down and depressed that this had to happen, as are we all. He wasn't this depressed when he received the cancer diagnosis.