Weekend in The Hospital - Don't Freak Out

Okay, I’ll tell you the end of the story first so you don’t freak out. Everything’s okay! Dad has been having some intestinal problems (I won’t go into detail on this one, TMI) and the long and short of it is that he wound up in the E.R. Thursday night with a stomach that looked pregnant (not full term mind you, just second trimester pregnant). His digestive systems decided to go on vacation after we abused it in Hawaii and just shut down. Needless to say, he was having severe abdominal pain. The x-rays didn’t show much and he was scheduled for a CT scan the next day, so they gave him a shot of morphine, an enema, a pat on the head and the bill and sent him home. He went in the next morning for the CT and it showed that the peritoneum had thickened and that fluid was building up between the peritoneum and the stomach. This means the fluid was not crossing the normally porous peritoneum into the intestines. There are several causes of the symptoms Dad is experiencing (severe abdominal pain, distended abdomen, fluid build-up behind peritoneum, elevated white count, constipation, etc). When we began radiation, the doctor told us pancreatitis and/or other organ revolts were possibilities. They were using extreme treatments and they were combining radiation with a chemo that would intensify the effects of the radiation. The target of this treatment is generally not happy with this approach. Mad pancreas = pancreatitis and all the symptoms Dad is experiencing. The doctor just told us that his pancreatic enzymes were not elevated, but in fact low. That rules out pancreatitis. But other organs such as the peritoneum, intestines, stomach could be protesting resulting in problems. We just don't know. Another possibility is infection. Our friends Rusty and Gina have experienced exactly this with Rusty's mom. Joanna has pancreatic cancer and had the same symptoms Dad is experiencing during her treatment. Thedoctors had only gloom and doom prognoses to tell. Since she has pancreatic cancer, it must be that the cancer has spread! Noooooo. There was a pocket of infected fluid in one of her lungs. The final possibility (and my personal least favorite) is that the cancer has spread to the peritoneum and spread over the surface of it, encasing it, preventing the fluid to pass to the intestines. We don’t like this possibility, so we’ll just ignore this one.

Please continue to lift up Mom and Dad during yet another time of waiting and not knowing. Dad will remain in the hospital for observation until the procedure is performed on Monday. We shouldl have the ultrasound and blood culture results (testing for some infections) on Monday. He is still in pain and nauseated (maybe he is pregnant). They are doing an endoscopic ultrasound on Monday to take a visual look at the peritoneum, stomach, intestines, etc. This will tell us a lot about what’s going on, so we will update you as soon as we know. As always, continue to lift Dad up in prayer. Our eyes are firmly fixed on God’s promises. God spoke pretty clearly to us at the outset that He wasn’t going to calm the storm, but He would take us through it and over it as we leaned in to Him and His strength. Time to lean in with all we’re worth!