Occupy Hospital

What have you been up to the last month?  The Johnson's, well, we have started our own "Occupy Hospital" movement.  Where to begin?
Let's start with sweet Kadence.  Remember how she had surgery in January?  Adenoid removal and tympanoplasty (hole in ear drum patching).  Well, that didn't fix the problem.  She continued to have infected ear drainage and the patch in over the hole in her ear drum didn't take.  In fact, another hole surfaced.  2 large holes in her ear drum.  The only solution was to do a mastoidectomy.  Long story short her mastoid bone (the bone directly behind her ear) was infected and the infected mastoid cells needed to be removed.  You can google the surgery if you want, it involves slicing along the back of the ear and drilling through the mastoid bone.  Also, tissue was graphed from Kadence's skull to rebuild her ear drum and patch up the two holes.  Timing with surgery was key as we knew I would be having my own surgery and then beginning chemo.  On March 23 Kadence had her surgery, all went well with one small hitch.  A nerve branch was weakened in her face causing temporary facial paralysis.  She could blink her eyes, pucker her lips but the right side of her face could not smile.  Due to the complication they admitted us to the hospital for the night, administered 4 IV bags of steroids to Kadence (to reduce inflammation around the nerve to hopefully "wake" it up.) Luckily the steroids worked and we were able to take her home the following afternoon.

Baby girl before surgery.  Right ear!

Right out of surgery

Taking a tour around the hospital in a wagon!

Left side smiles, right side does not.

The next day our Angel got her smile back.  Phew!

Kadence recovered well, very well in fact.  Grandma Rhe-Rhe (Jason's mom) had come out to help in Kadence's recovery and be there to help with the girls while I had my "Outpatient" port surgery.  (Port being placed in my body for the chemo to be administered through)  I put "outpatient" in "quotations" because I was told "this is a very easy surgery, takes about 30 min, you'll be in recovery about 2 hours and then you'll go home."  Not this girl.  Come to find out, I am the 1%.  Somehow during surgery my lung was punctured which caused it to partially collapse.  Imagine this:  I am wheeled out of surgery, my doctor and anesthesiologist are standing over me "Jessica, how are you doing?  Jessica, take a deep breath for us!"  I do as I'm told and say "I have pressure.  It hurts."  BOOM.  All of a sudden an X-ray tech is at my side, they are sitting me up taking an X-ray.  The X-ray is read immediately, I am told I have a Pnemothorax (giant air bubble in my chest cavity) that is putting pressure on lung causing it to collapse and I have to go right back into the O.R. for immediate surgery #2, putting a chest catheter in place.  HUH?!  SAY WHA???  THIS IS OUTPATIENT SURGERY!  WHAT IS GOING ON????  Back comes the anesthesiologist, into la la land I go AGAIN and I wake up with this:

The device is the chest catheter, below the cut to the right is my lovely lady lump ie. my port.

Okay, the story gets better.  Are you ready for this.  Jason was in CANADA for business during all this.  This was not a big deal!  (Enter Ross from Friends voice saying "WE WERE ON A BREAK" but substitute the words "THIS WAS OUTPATIENT SURGERY!")  Poor Jason gets news that his lovely bride's lung collapsed and he's a 4 hour flight away....(ha ha ha, normally!) So he manages to get on the 1st flight out the following morning.  A Tuesday.  Tuesday April 3.  The day of MASSIVE tornadoes that hit the Dallas/Fort Worth area?  Yeah.  That Tuesday.  So, he hops a flight but funny, you can't LAND AT AN AIRPORT IN THE MIDDLE OF A TORNADO OUTBREAK!  His 4 hour flight takes 7 hours.  He was able to land in the small window of time that they were letting planes land and made his way to the hospital to once again be my partner in crime.  (An Occupy movement isn't very effective with 1 person ;) )

Now I've got to point out while Grandma was manning the kids back at the house, I had two dear friends with me at the hospital.  They were with me all throughout surgery and after and one even stayed the night with me in my room.  As true friends do, they gave me a pedicure (I was told "Girl, you can't go into surgery with those ugly toes!  We can't have them talking about you!") foot rubs and provided more laughter which was in fact the best medicine.  Turns out laughing with a chest catheter in is pretty painful, but it was worth it.  I was in the hospital 4 days, April 2-5, out on Thursday.  Thursday the catheter was removed and the pnemothorax was gone.  I was discharged just in time for Easter and to begin Chemo the following Tuesday, April 10th.  So I thought.

Occupy Round 2.  Here's the short version.  I get home, feeling a little beaten and battered but what do I expect?  I had surgery less than a week ago.  Then Sunday night, Easter night I started to feel different.  The right side of my body had been sore obviously but then the left started to feel sore and stiff.  My throat started to feel like it was closing in.  As I slept throughout the night it only got worse and then my skin started to feel "squishy."  Monday morning I went to the ER.  I had Subcutaneous emphysema, sometimes abbreviated SCE or SE and also called tissue emphysema, or Sub Q air, occurs when gas or air is present in the subcutaneous layer of the skin. Subcutaneous refers to the tissue beneath the cutis of the skin, and emphysema refers to trapped air. Since the air generally comes from the chest cavity, subcutaneous emphysema usually occurs on the chest, neck and face, where it is able to travel from the chest cavity along the fascia.^[1] Subcutaneous emphysema has a characteristic crackling feel to the touch, a sensation that has been described as similar to touching Rice Krispies;^[2] this sensation of air under the skin is known as subcutaneous crepitation.Subcutaneous emphysema can result from puncture of parts of the respiratory or gastrointestinal systems.  Yep.  Another. Complication.  Stemming from my punctured lung.  Which happened during my OUTPATIENT SURGERY!  I had to be admitted to the hospital for a week.  The only thing that cures subcutaneous air is time, your body needs to naturally reabsorb the air.  The reason I needed to be in the hospital is because the concern was if my body did not absorb the air it could potentially create enough pressure around my lungs to cause them to collapse again.  That would not be bueno.  SO, with this new complication the start date of chemo was delayed a week.  At once point I said to Jason "How crazy is our life right now that my "bad" day consists of NOT starting chemo!"  Sheesh!  At least with this hospital stay I was back in my old stomping grounds: same floor, same nurses, same room as my post Colon surgery.  Now, this is a HUGE deal because this is a corner room, the suite of all rooms.  You can actually walk around in it without bumping into things.  When you're a regular like me, these rooms become available ;)  (Joke! We got lucky, but if I had to be there, this was the ideal place to be!)

Now the good news.  One of my oldest, bestest friends had decided to fly in from Colorado to be here for my first round of chemo.  She was coming to represent the CSU Fab 5.  Literally, as she was getting on the plane in Colorado to come HERE I was in the ER trying to figure out what was going on with me.  So, although she was not here for chemo she was a huge help!  She was my hospital roomie.  My second set of ears with the doctors.  My hair washer. My walk taker-wither.  My therapist.  My laughter.  My reminder of my blessings, my life and all the angels I have met along the way.  It takes a long time to grow an old friend and I couldn't have been more thankful to have her next to me as the Occupy movement continued ;)