This was my letter to Brooke last week and rather than write the whole story again, I thought I'd just share my letter here:
"So its Thursday night and I'm sitting in the hospital with TAYLOR. He's asleep and so I thought i'd start my letter to you - its going to take awhile to write it all down.
So I can't even remember if I told you how the week kind of started out
so a week ago today (last Thursday) my dad ended up having to go back in for emergency surgery on his enlarged prostate. He'd had surgery the week before and it didn't do the job and he started having a lot of complications. So I spent that Thur night at the hospital while he was in surgery. I was back in to check on him every day and he seemed pretty good at first but then each day he seemed to get a little worse. He was in the hospital until Tues and then he was transferred to Highland Care center - the same place Grammy was after she fell and broke her back. The dr at that center thinks he could be there for 20-30 days. I was shocked - I thought he'd be there just for a few days to get his strength back.
So while all that was going on -- Sunday night we had our valentine's dinner and Mary was there for dinner and that was fun. Taylor was at dinner and seemed fine. We had family time in the living room and everyone opened their little presents. By the end of the evening tho Taylor wasn't feeling great and was lying down on the couch. At that point he was just complaining of his back hurting. He's actually been complaining about his back quite a bit -I've been blaming it on his bad bed.
Monday morning he'd planned to have Sarah over for breakfast as part of their valentine's date. Well, in the morning I woke up and Taylor was laying in my bed. That was a bit of a shock. He said he hadn't slept since 2:00 and had started throwing up at 5:00 am. He cancelled the date with Sarah and felt bad enough that I took him to see Dr Memmott at 10:40. When I made the appt and told the nurse what was going on, she suggested maybe kidney stones. I sure hoped not. He did a urine sample and it was all negative. So with no other indicators of anything else being wrong, the Dr figured it was stomach flu, which is very prevalent right now.
We went home and Taylor threw up the rest of the day and didn't sleep much that night. On Tues I let Kamryn stay home from school because she had a cold and to watch over Taylor. I had a dentist appt and had to go check on my dad for his transfer to the care center. While I was gone Taylor was crying out in pain but he didn't tell me that until much later in the day. I was gone for about 2 hours. Taylor had pretty much switched from throwing up to diarrhea and had really bad stomach cramps. I figured it was a pretty terrible flu. He was in a lot of pain and I felt really bad for him. He sat with us at dinner for a few minutes. When he got up to walk to the bathroom he was totally hunched over and could hardly walk down the hall. It totally reminded me of when Justin had his appendicitis. I was definitely thinking appendix at that point. It was just hard to decide what to do. He also started running a fever too. We definitely should have taken him in but didn't that night. I feel bad about that now. He was still fairly calm and was lying down on the couch. I gave him some ibuprofen for the fever but worried about doing that since he had an empty stomach. he seemed to be settled down enough to sleep. I told him to get me or call me anytime. So we went to bed. I checked on him several times during the night and he seemed to be asleep.
In the morning I cancelled going to exercise with Jenny - I was beat and needed a little more sleep. We'd decided that I would take Taylor back to the dr in the morning if he wasn't any better. When I talked to him at 7:00 ish he thought we should go back and was in pain again. I called dad and we agreed that I should just take him to the ER at IMC. At first I was going to take the kids to school and then take Taylor but he didn't really want to wait. I remembered Justin was home and could take the kids. So we struggled getting taylor to the car - he was in a lot of pain and had no strength to walk. He couldn't decide what was worse - walking himself or having Justin carry him. He ended up walking out to the van and we were off.
WE got to the ER at IMC about 8:30 - they took him right back to a room and had nurses right in with him. They got him started on an IV with saline to hydrate him and gave him some morphine. He looked pretty pale and grey. They took blood and got a urine sample. He was in the bathroom a LONG time. His sample was pretty dark and ugly looking. Def not the same looking as the sample he gave on Monday at the DR.
He seemed a bit better and more calm once the morphine started working and the iv got in him. The nurse came back with the blood work results - his White blood count was 26! Normal is 4-13. For sure indicator he was full of infection and the nurse said it sure seemed like appendix. His belly was tight and super sensitive to touch. Then the Dr ordered at CT scan with contrast. that meant over 90 minutes he had to drink this lemonade type drink which was the contrast. When he finished the drink they took him for the CT scan. He wasn't gone too long. We waited just a bit for the results - the Dr came in and said it was definitely his appendix and it needed to come out.
All this time it was just Taylor and me at the ER. Dad had an important meeting with the owner at the Lehi hospital. As soon as that was over he called me to check in - I knew it was the appendix but hadn't talked to the surgeon yet. So dad came straight to the hospital and got to Taylor's room about 5 minutes before the resident surgeon came in. he looked so young!
He told us they had a narrow window to get Taylor in for surgery before his surgeon boss had to start doing clinic. Or it would have to wait until the end of the day. Once the Sr surgeon came in and examined Taylor and his belly was so tender to the touch she was afraid that the appendix had ruptured. So that got him priority to get into the ER asap and they rushed him to get him ready. They took him upstairs for surgery and we met with the surgical nurse and the anesthesiologist. taylor was very calm thru all of this and said he wasn't scared. He received very good care from everyone. They took him into surgery at 1:30 and it took about an hour.
I had put something about it on FB so i was getting lots of comments and texts - that passed the time quickly, responding to them. It was about 4:00 by the time they brought him out of recovery to his room on the 11th floor. He was "drunk" sounding - a little funny. He was in pretty good spirits due to some good drugs. Dad and i spent the evening with him. AT one point we thought he was asleep so we snuck down to the cafeteria for some dinner. First time I'd really eaten that day except for cookies from the OR waiting room. It was a "date" for me and dad.
I stayed over night with Taylor. No way could I leave him there alone. It was definitely a good thing I stayed. I wasn't too thrilled with the night nurse (and now she's back again tonight) - she wasn't very attentive and waited too long to give Taylor pain meds and tried to talk him out of taking good pain drugs. I actually ended up liking her a lot better the 2nd night.
I slept on a couch in the room and maybe got about 4 hours sleep. We were up from 3-5 helping Taylor. The surgeons came in at 6:30 to check on Taylor. It was a new head resident surgeon that we'd never seen and about 4-5 other resident surgeons charting and taking notes. The nurses call them "the cronies" One of the residents was the first resident we saw in the ER. He was in on the surgery and said it was NASTY. Taylor's belly was full of pus :( He also had a stone of some sort in there, probably calcified poop and it was probably the cause of all of this. Taylor wasn't too happy when the surgeon pushed on his sore belly, esp at 6:30 in the morning.
He will be in the hospital until he can eat regular food and pass gas. He's had a kind of tough day today but he's had a pretty good attitude about it. I stayed all day except for a couple of hours when I went to get the twins. I checked them out of school early and took them to meet Susan half way. She kept them the rest of the day and took Kamryn to dance for me.
Dad came here after work for about an hour - sadly Taylor was finally asleep most of that time. Then dad went to play church basketball but is coming back now. I'm going to stay the night here again - I don't like leaving him here alone.
So, wow - what a week right ??
Love you
Mom"
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| Taylor in the ER When the resident surgeon came in to examine him the first time he gave him a bad time about the UTES blanket He obviously went to BYU |
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| When he first was brought to his room after surgery |
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| The night nurse checking his vitals |
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| The day after surgery Taylor passed the time by mostly watching Cartoon Network |
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| It was a huge effort to have a shower and wash his hair before his girlfriend came to visit ... |
It was a good diversion to have Sarah there for awhile
Lots of sleeping and napping going on in that hospital room
2nd night in the hospital was much better
We both got a lot more sleep
The surgeon cleared him to start eating regular food
so he was happy to have cereal for breakfast
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| The awesome view from Taylor's room on the 11th floor |
The view looking north towards downtown.
The surgeon and nurses encouraged Taylor to go for walks
to get his strength back up
and get his insides working again.
After going for this walk they said he was good enough to go home
Back at home
We got him set up in my recliner chair for a couple of nights
It was still a pretty tough couple of days for Taylor
It took Taylor several days at home to recover. He needed a lot of help for a few days. The bad thing was it was the last week of the Trimester at school so he was missing several finals. I emailed his teachers and went in to talk to them to help work things out for him. He didn't go to school on Monday except at the end of the day he stopped into his French class to see them making beignets. It was good for him to be back around friends and laugh a little.
Each day during the week he made it to a little more school and yesterday he finally seemed to be back to his regular self.
We're so grateful for the miracles of modern medicine and that Taylor could have surgery and be so quickly taken care of. We're so happy he's getting better :)
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