ED Again!

We're back in Stanford's ED (Emergency Room) because Mary's abdomen is very bloated (distended). This is accompanied with about a 10 pound weight gain over the past two weeks. That is not appropriate given her amount of food intake which is multiple grazing events per day with all of them being "meal lite" in content.

The doc just stopped by to tell us that all the tests are nominal! Yeah!! Blood tests are all good, liver function is good, urine tests are good, no fever, no nausea, no other outward signs of difficulty. The next step is a CT Scan to see if they can see something amiss in her innards and they just rolled her to the radiology department (10:50PM) for her CT scan.

The doc said that if the CT scan is negative, they'll likely just release her. If it is positive (anything detected as not nominal), they'll admit her into the hospital. And given she is bloated, its likely she will be admitted because something is wrong.

Mary is alert, aware, fully functional and in good spirits other than she is trying to look like the Pillsbury doughboy or, perhaps, the Michelin man. This, of course, makes us very nervous because of what happened after surgery when she was admitted to ICU. To save you the looking it up part, it was an imbalance of her electrolytes caused by or from the retention of too much fluid--i.e., bloated. Once the renal doc's were brought in, things got better faster. It was this history that caused the resident oncologist to ask us to come in to ED for further work up.

We arrived here about 7:30PM and they have done a battery of tests and the CT scan is in progress as I finish this posting. We knew this would happen so we brought energy bars which have kept me going but Mary has not eaten because Dr. Mary decided she could not eat if she is having a CT scan. She didn't actually ask any of the staff about this, she just knows...

I'll keep you posted.