Thanks to great help from Mindy and Brett today, Mom was able to have two people with her for the follow up surgical appointment. We've been having numerous problems with her feeding tube leaking this past week and the problem was hopefully going to be resolved today by taking it out and inserting a new one. It looks like the old feeding tube had a leak which didn't allow the tube to completely seal to the side of her intestines causing a lot of leaking problems for Her and us. We were also able to address some more of the infection which had become localized in what seemed to be an abscess located right next to her feeding tube. The physician was able to drain it and treat it right there. Mom still isn't able to take in large amounts of food through her mouth, so until she can do that, the feeding tube needs to stay in. But believe you me, we are fighting tooth and nail to force more food in her. We use to give her a hard time about how much tarter sauce she would put on her salmon or the copious amounts of butter on her bread, but now we can't get her to use enough.
Most of us throughout our lives have problems with eating too much food. But now Mom is on the total opposite spectrum where she can't seem to eat ENOUGH... and as wonderful as that all sounds to us its not great for her right now. We are working on getting her strength back up, helping her eat more and get moving more. Her surgeons cleared her for chemo and said that her care will be moved over to Dr.Ward, her oncologist, and that she should just need a few more follow up appointments with them. We are still continuing forward with progress, just a step at a time.
