Heart Bypass Surgery

I am here at the hospital for a while. Mom is sleeping, they are still keeping her very sedated. The new medications have a lot of side effects so the doctors hope by keeping her sedated the meds will have a chance to work before she has to deal with the side effects. First they want to clear up the inflammation around the heart since last time when it went on for so long Mom develloped a bone(sternum) infection and then needed another surgery. An echocardiogram is booked for Monday to check the status of the inflammation.Once this is taken care of then they will start chemo - once every 3 weeks for 15 weeks and then radiation everyday for 25 days. It can be done at our local hospital becasue the new addition which will be the regional cancer centre opens 05/05/05. Status of cancer: it is still considered to have been caught early and the expected outcome is positive as it is not in the lymph nodes or the liver. The pancreas , gall bladder and bile duct were removed so there is no concern there. The stomach and duodenum also touch the pancreas and since they did find cancer cells in the sections that was removed they want to aggressively treat it so it doesn't spread. Feeding port will be used until Mom can tolerate enough food to use the insulin properly and start to regain some weight Nerves of the bowel are damaged by the diabetes, can be helped with medication, at this time she will not need a colostomy Still waiting for results of endoscopy which was done yesterday I have not read the posts. I am saving them for Mom to read as it will give her something to look forward to. We know she loves this group as we have heard her talk about so many of you but I won't mention names in case I leave someone out. We are having beautiful weather here so Carmela is going to show me how to clean up Mom's gardens to surprise her when she comes home. I'm sure she has mentioned her love of flowers. Right now the goal is to have her home for Mother's Day. The doctors are keeping her in CCU for several days, they want her monitored 24 hours a day. Thanks to all of you for your love and concern regarding our Mom Mark Gentile