Update on mom...

Well, the last 24 hours has been rough. Got to bed around 10:30, and mom called at 11:45 and asked if I could come over for a minute (not a good sign). Got there, she was dressed (gown/robe), shoes, sitting there waiting to go to the ER. She asked me to look at her neck.WOW it looked like an Ekrich sausge had been stuffed under the skin where she had the surgery last week. Her head was killing her (which had been getting increasingly worse since surgery. Got to the ER-- blood pressure 198/86 oxygen level 83. Kept her there until about 6:00, then to intermedite ICU. Surgeon's assistant showed up about 8:00 took one look and talked to me&nurses a few minutes then said the surgeon should be down stairs in a few minutes, and she was going to talk to him. then she walked as fast as she could without running out of icu. By this time mom's neck was as swollen as it could where you could see it, and was swelling inside her throat. She began complaining of a choking feeling, and difficulty breathing. Strange thing is, everything was normal when she went to bed. The pain in her neck and headache woke her up, and she found the swelling, and called me. The sweling had gotten so bad that her adam's apple and everything else in her throat was displaced to the left by about an inch. Her adam's apple was half way to her ear. (They had given her two injections of pain meds in the IV port, plus a Darvocet, plus morphine with no relief on her head. Blood pressure would go down for a few minutes, then right back up.) When the surgeon got there, he looked at her, talked to her, and within 15 minutes, she was on her way back to surgery. We all figured since she was on 2 blood thinners she was bleeding out.

When he talked to us after the surgery, he said that it wasn't blood buildup, it was nust normal postop swelling, that was building up so quickly, it could not absorb. He said they were going to leave the tube in her throat for a while because they had so much trouble getting it down (had to have a special tool to get it down). We went to get something to eat while they got her settled back into ICU. Linda and Sue went back to the hospital, and I went to the office for a few minutes to help him find something. They said they still had her knocked out, the tube down her throad, and her hands tied so she couldn't pull the tube out. I came home and got about three hours sleep, then once I figured out if it was morning or evening, went back to the hospital. She was sitting up eating supper. She had a good color, NO tube, NO headache, not complaining of severe throat pain from the tube (like the first time), and was in a good mood.

The surgeon said he could not guarantee that it would not happen again, it was just part of the normal post surgical complications, her's just waited longer to manifest itself than most, and could not, for whatever reason, reabsorb.
As of right now, she is doing great.