Update- A Difficult Night

Wow…Alice (Mom, Grandma) had a tough night last night. Yesterday, at the Tuesday check-up, Alice had her vitals measured and looked at. The good news was that her white cell count remains good and she has very good blood-sugar levels. Hemoglobin was down a bit as well as her weight (about three pounds). This was expected, however, since Alice had fought off an infection two weeks prior. Her G-tube was also healing well, after having been reset (although it is still a bit irritating for her). So there were many good things happening with Alice’s health at this time as she continues the cancer treatments. But the one nagging problem Alice has had in the past few weeks are those episodes when she can’t breath. It has happened about four times now. I’ll give you a few details here.

Evidently, Alice has a very small airway to start with, and when you add the extra mucus secretions generated because of the cancer treatments, there can be these “mucus plugs” that block off her breathing. Those of you who received my email on Aug. 21, know that we almost lost her because of one of these episodes. Thank the Lord it happened while she was at the UC Hospital. They were able to perform an emergency intubation and put her on a respirator all day. She eventually came through that ordeal ok. It was decided after this to do a tracheotomy at the base of her neck to assure proper breathing. This would also allow for the ability to suction up excess secretions in her lower trachea area. Everything was working fine until the trache tube got unseated and was very uncomfortable for her. With this in mind, yesterday she brought this to the attention of Dr. Cohen, one of the UC Oncologist doctors, who saw the problem. He immediately sent her to the ENT floor to have it looked at. This ENT staff, that originally performed the tracheotomy, decided that Alice’s airway passages had healed to the point that she no longer needed the trache (we are still trying to figure this one out).

So she went home without the trache tube. Unfortunately, in the late evening before going to bed, Alice had another one of those breathing attacks. Without the trache, we could not use the suction catheter to unclog her airway. I had to call in the paramedics who subsequently stabilized her breathing and brought her to the Sherman Hospital ER. At the ER they put in a new trache and cleaned out the “plugs” that were inhibiting her breath. Freely breathing, Alice was brought back home where she finally got some good sleep. We want to thank Dr. Peeters and the ER staff for calmly taking care of the situation. This morning Alice is doing much better as she works on her “Teacup Tales" book. She is still on schedule for a third round of cancer treatments coming up this Sunday, Sept. 9^th. Visiting nurses are planning to work through a rotation at the house as they administer to Alice’s needs. Continue to pray for Alice. Pray for a stable time period now, with no more “breathing episodes.” In all, the UC Oncology staff is encouraged with her response to the treatments at this time. JT:)