I was getting ready for work myself when he got to the house & I could see that he was in a lot of pain. He was in the fetal position on our bed for a while, feeling awful. I told him to call me & let me know how he was later and I left for work. It didn't appear that I could really help him & we both thought he was getting a stomach virus or something. He texted later that he was going to the doctor at 1:30 because it was getting worse by the hour. He came by the school where I work to get cash to pay the doc on his way & he was obviously hurting a lot, sweating & flushed.
An hour later, he texted that the Xrays revealed a bowel obstruction. He said the doc was admitting him to the hospital immediately for surgery & I needed to come get him ASAP to drive him to the hospital.
By the time I picked up the kids & went to the doc's office where he was, an ambulance was pulling up to get him instead. The doc changed her mind & felt it was important for him to be transported that way because he was having a reaction to the pain medicine & she wanted him monitored on the way to the hospital.
We got into a room at the hospital about 4:00. The doctor stopped by to see him shortly after we arrived & said that 90% of all bowel obstructions will clear on their own, so there was only a 10% chance he'd need surgery. (Whew!) However, that means laying in the hospital bed for 3-5 days with nothing by mouth to allow his intestines to 'rest' & do the work of wiggling & moving (like all of our intestines do!) to move the obstruction through.
They ordered an NG tube (tube down the nose) to suction out all his stomach contents and a cat scan so that they could get a better idea of what sort of obstruction they're dealing with. To do the CT, he'd have to drink some contrast stuff, but that pretty much immediately came back UP pretty violently....so needless to say, they did the CT without contrast after all! (When that happened, they decided that the NG tube wasn't really doing any good so they took it out. Larry was THRILLED with that decision because it was driving him crazy!)
The surgeon said that he's almost 100% sure that the obstruction is scar tissue from his gall bladder surgery (15 yrs ago) and unless the CT results showed something drastically different, they will just watch him for the next few days & do daily Xrays/scans to confirm that it's not getting worse or wait for it to clear on its own. If, after 3 or 4 days he's not progressively getting better, they will THEN discuss surgery, but chances are great that they will not have to do that!
I decided to go ahead & come home tonight since he's not in a private room & sleep here rather than that oh-so-comfortable chair in the hospital room. In the morning I will take the kids to school & go onto work from 10-2 and then pick up the kids & go back to the hospital so they can see him. The girls took things pretty well today, but Samuel was quite upset about his dad, so it'll do him good to see him & figure out that he's ok. I figured if he's going to be there for several days & I might need to take off work on Monday to bring him home, it's better for me to go on to work tomorrow & let the docs/nurses take care of him for the day. (Of course if something changes drastically I will be back at the hospital in a heartbeat!)
I left the hospital about 10:45 tonight & at that point, they had not gotten the CT results back, but unless they find something very different than what the doctor expects, it looks like he'll just be hanging out in the hospital bed for a few days.
If things change, I'll update.
P.S. I'm having a donut from the donut shop in the morning & then I'm going to come home & take a nap before work. And I'm not going to feel guilty about either thing! :)
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