If someone had asked what we hoped the new year would bring, we'd all say, "Good health for Karl," right? Well, we're hoping we took a step in the right direction by bringing him out to beautiful, sunshiny, incredibly cold, Rochester, Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic.
Today we met with Karl's orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Yazsemski who, we hope, will figure out why Karl continues to get deep, decubitus ulcers that run from the surface of his rear all the way to the hardware in his spine. The first ulcer, you may recall, was "fixed" during a trip to Mayo in August/September. A new surface ulcer appeared soon after Karl made a trip back out to Mayo over the Thanksgiving holiday to have a suspect mass on his kidney oblated. (All is well in terms of masses/tumors/cancer stuff, by the way). Early in December our dear friend, or should I say, angel, Gloria Brooks came out and suggested we have a doctor look at the ulcer as it seemed to be tunneling a bit.
Because Karl's oncologist, Dr. Schuetze, is so wonderful, he agreed to be Karl's primary care doc/quarterback. He kindly ordered home care and after an initial assessment, it was decided Karl needed physical therapy and visits twice weekly by home care nurses. On the first visit by the home care nurse, she discovered that Karl's wound had gotten dangerously deep. During that visit, a piece of gauze used to pack the wound became entagled in a screw or piece of hardware in Karl's back. That was on Dec. 23. Taking no chances, we went to the emergency room at U-M where they said Karl needed to have all the hardware in his back removed because it was causing continued infections, which would never ever go away. They said surgery wasn't needed immediately and told Karl to go home and enjoy Christmas, which, by the way, we did!
Karl decided he would rather have the doctors who put in the hardware assess the situation and so a call was made to Dr. Yazsemski. The response, as usual, was, "When can you get here?"
Today Dr. Y's first question was, "Is it easier for you to be in the hospital or at your hotel room for lots of tests?" That was an easy answer. And all the folks up here on the 8th floor are giving Karl the welcome and smiles he always gets. I guess if we can't be home with our family and friends, it sure is nice to be where we know Karl's going to get fantastic care and true concern.
So, what's to come? At the very least we know the gauze has to come out, but we don't know how much is there or where it is. So Karl will get a CT scan, perhaps even tonight. After running tests to pinpoint the source of mild infection, Dr. Y will consider ways to treat it. He said he suspects surgery will be on the horizon. He thought that it probably was the hardware causing the problem and said he'd probably take it out. Then he'd wait to see how Karl did without it. In this case, Karl relies on the structure to help him transfer from bed to chair, etc. After a week or two, if Karl can't live without the structure, Dr. Y will put it back in.
Dr. Y wondered how long we had planned to be in Rochester. We told him we were here as long as it took to get the problem solved. He said, "Good. Everything's worked well for Karl so far, but now it's time to make some adjustments."
How long will Karl be here? We don't know, but we do know that we're in the right place and 2011 promises to be a whole lot better than 2010! Thanks for your continued prayers.
Blessings,
Kerry
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