We are back in the ICU, quick background, Jagger has not been feeling well since new year day, but we had some good days and some bad one as predicted.
Last week was rough, so Dr. K upped some of his meds, and we actually had two good days on Wednesday and Thursday, when he was very happy and smiling all day.
Friday, he started to have some pain again, and on Saturday morning, we had to call our hospice nurse at 5 am because we could not control his pain.
We started a stronger regiment of pain med, and he was on Ativan and Morphine every 4 hours (but staggered so he had some med every two hours). Of course, that made him very sleepy and he spent most of the day in bed sleeping. In the late afternoon, his breathing was starting to be a little more forced, so the hospice decided to have some oxygen deliver to our house to see if that help.
It was not a great help, since Jagger does not like anything on his face, so it was pretty difficult to give him any oxygen.
The night was pretty agitated and by Sunday morning, he was struggling to breath, so we decided to go to the ER. He was taken straight to Trauma room and they accessed his port and gave him IV morphine, did a lot of deep suction and he seemed to calm down. We were given the choice to go home if we wanted. By that time, for some reason, he started to spike a fever (which is very rare for him). So just to make sure, we decided to stay for the night as his breathing was also still not back to 100%. At that time, we had no idea that it was the right thing to do.
So we got admitted back to 5East, a floor we have been to several times, we spend 2 weeks there in November, so it is like our second home and all the nurses recognized him, he is like a rock star on that floor.
All was well until about 3 am this morning, when he started to scream of pain again and his fever got up to 103.9 which is the highest he ever had. So the doc ordered more blood test and they increased his oxygen.
After several morphine doses and no results, they decided to transfer us to the ICU at 6 am this morning.
Of course the level of care in the ICU is so much better (and way more expensive for sure). He finally started to calm down by time we go settle in ICU. However all the pain med they giving him are only effective for a couple of hours max.
So they increase his methadone dose and morphine. The idea is to get to a dose of methadone (given 3 times a day) that works for him and in the mean time use the morphine as "breakthrough drug", great idea on paper but with Jagger and his unique metabolism that is not working. So by afternoon, we switch him to IV morphine that is going directly into his blood stream instead of his stomach. that worked for a few hours, but again he woke up screaming in pain, so they added Valium to his meds, and so far it seems to calm him down.
We know we will probably have another very eventful and difficult night, we just hope Jagger can get some rest and that we can control his pain better.
No comments:
Post a Comment