Recovering from His gall bladder surgery has been difficult. As most surgeries are for patients who have a neurological/movement disorder disease. Mostly because in a major surgery they have to put all of you completely asleep and that includes all the muscles and automatice systems that have a tough time performing on a regular basis. Also no matter how good the staff is the regular schedule and dosing of meds is not quite the same as at home. Then there is always the wait and see if any of the sypmtoms we are now dealing with are going to be permanent, a new "normal" as it were.
The challenge that we have been dealing with is called Orthostatic Hypotension (Spelling?). What that means is his blood pressure becomes non-existant and he passes out. While he is still concious, he is
non-responsive. This happens to be very much tied to his postural position and occurs mostly when he is sitting or has been standing for too long. The minute however that I lay him down in a prone position he is awake and talking- it's almost instant.
So we evaluate. Is this just the path of recovery? Is it a residual from the Anesth/pain meds? Is this a new symptom we have to learn to cope with? How do we cope with for now and in the future? Well The answer to the first question is wait and see and we hope that this is all it is, timje will tell. Same for the secound question. The third and fourth question - assume that this is the case, do your research, try different approaches, have patience.
We learned that his biggest challenge was in the morning, when he is still waking up, his body is taking longer to do so and he never was a pop up and be chipper man on the go kind of guy- so - Give him a chance to be fully awake, sit him up in the new adjustable bed and give him "special" fluids. That means 2 8oz cups, one of water with benefiber and one of the "Power" drinks, along with his morning meds. This will take about an hour.By then he is ready to get dressed and out to his chair avoiding the bathroom as that has it's own inheirant dangers in the mornings. So far we have been successful and we have had limited incedences of the passing out as opposed to so many we could hardly move out of bed.
It's now been 30 days since surgery, his meds have been stabilized and we are having fewer issues, but they still occur so perhaps in some degree we have a new normal and while we have learned to cope with them we do know that there is a med than can also help us with controlling it and we will probablly have to add that to the list. This comes as no surprise to us as Hypotension is one of the distinguishing symtpoms of this disease, we were just hoping for a bit more of a reprieve from it becoming another symptom to deal with on a daily basis.
So it has been a long and trying month, but with patience, thought, research, support and prayer we have made it through and we are now going to go and enjoy the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. Pictures to follow
