Illness has been particularly bad this year. Hubby got hit pretty hard himself.
He picked up what I strongly suspect was the norovirus/stomach bug, probably during a visit to his PCP's office. A visit, I hasten to add, I would not have taken him to, except that his insurer, Medicare, would not continue payments on his bipap without visits to the prescriber of said machine every three months. Neglecting to tell us this until nine months had passed since we got the bugger, and through a third party to boot.
Anyway, started in with the usual symptoms described for the bug, won't go into them here. He also has multiple sclerosis, and is what they call a 'secondary progressive' status there. Once the symptoms started, I immediately called EMS, because I knew this could be the beginning of something bad.
Unfortunately, it was.
Within 24 hours of him reaching the hospital, he spiked a fever and was taken to ICU. They started taking samples of various and sundry things to determine what was going on. I was pretty sure I already knew. Aspiration pneumonia. He'd inhaled... um. One of his symptoms. Into his left lung. And since he's basically nonmobile, due to having secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, it sat in there and festered.
They put him on an NG tube and through it, fed him lots of fun stuff like Zofran to keep him from having more severe symptoms and hopefully pull him through this quicker, as well as removing any troublesome stomach contents without having them make a pit stop in his lungs. He also received daily shots of a blood thinner (Lasix, I think they said?) into his stomach to prevent clots.
About two days later, his oxygenation levels crashed into the low 70s. This, as they say, was double plus ungood. One of the ICU nurses kept him on one of those manual respiration thingies while they called the crit care doctor in to intubate him. I was asked to remove myself from the room while they did this. This was very probably a good idea.
He remained in ICU for about a week, on a respirator and receiving a cocktail of various antibiotics including Vancomycin, which is some pretty serious stuff. After they figured out what the specific culprit was (can't remember the exact name, but gram-positive something), he was knocked down to having just Levaquin. The respirator tube was removed (thank goodness), but he still had an oxygen cannula and the NG tube for feeding, which he finally started getting after they figured the initial bug that precipitated this whole scenario had passed.
Spent another week in just a regular room, and eventually his oxygenation recovered enough to have the cannula removed, but the NG remained. A swallow study was done, and determined that he would need to be on honey-thick liquids and pureed foods until his swallowing could be rehabbed. He continued getting the belly shots as well.
After a week, it was recommended that he be moved to a LTACH (long term acute care hospital) to recover. So far, he's been there a week, still on honey-thick liquids and pureed foods. It took a bit of convincing for us to get the NG tube taken out of him, but I managed to explain to the overseeing doctor's nurse-practitioner that at that point, the NG tube was more of a detriment to his recovery than an asset, making it more difficult for him to swallow. As it was one of the thicker and more rigid NG tubes available, and he had had sufficient caloric intake, through plentiful Boost shakes and ice-cream-like nutrition supplements hubby calls 'calorie bombs', the NP agreed that it would be taken out, cautioning us that if his nutrition suffered, it'd go back in.
I've seen what a honey-thick, pureed food diet looks like, as I have been feeding it to him in the hospital; he can't feed himself. He's a braver being than I am, Gunga Din.
At this point, he's been in one hospital or another for three weeks, with no prospect of going home any time soon, although the speech therapist that's been working on him with his swallowing says he may be cleared for nectar-thick liquids and a slightly more substantial diet as soon as tomorrow. He's still not a very happy camper, but I'm just glad he survived.
