8:29 PM: She sounds like she’s going into shock, and it’s crowded so no one is seeing her. If you have prayers, any religion, please pray them now.

UPDATE

7:22 AM, NOV. 27: Here’s where we are this morning. It took until 11 PM for the hospital to see her. Something is wrong–some sort of post-surgical complication–but they don’t know what. At 4 AM they gave her morphine and sent her home for a few hours of sleep, but she’s to be back in there this morning. The good news I’ve had is that her temperature, which had dropped from normal to 96.5 over the course of about an hour right before she called me at 8:10 PM, stabilized, and her blood pressure is within normal limits (info that I didn’t have until 11 PM).

The one possibility that my daughter could tell me they’d mentioned was an abcess–she’s not medical-tech oriented, and she was in bad pain, and her stress level was high. People in those situations don’t catch medical terminology and jargon thrown at them at high speed, so there are other possibilities, but she doesn’t know what they are.

At this point, I’m waiting for a call from her to let me know what’s going on.

Thank you for prayers, good thoughts, candles, anything you’ve got. I’m deeply grateful.

UPDATE

1:00 PM, NOV. 27: Not answering her cell phone, not answering her messages. Still waiting to hear something.

UPDATE

1:58 PM, NOV, 27: Finally heard from her. She’s been readmitted. Abdominal pain, vomiting, chills. They don’t know what’s wrong. They’re going to run tests.

Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement. I don’t do religion, but I know prayer and focused thought work, and I’m grateful for every one of you holding her in your thoughts.

UPDATE

5:55 PM, NOV 27: She’s having “something radioactive with injected dye” done in radiology. Tony–her guy–didn’t get the specific name of the procedure, and I’m not up to guessing. This hospital she’s in seems so far to be pretty short on patient teaching and pretty long on nurses eating hamburgers at the nurses’ station. No idea when she’ll be out (but this, sadly, is Standard Operating Procedure—tests take forever). Still no clue what’s wrong, but maybe after they have have her back from this.

I’m trying not to remember all the things I’ve seen go wrong with radioactive dye and patients.

UPDATE

9:05 PM, NOV 27:Still waiting to hear anything.

UPDATE

8:00 PM, NOV 28:Things are kind of up in the air. They’ve found the problem, after a bunch of really nasty tests; the surgeon didn’t get everything closed off the first time in, and her liver is leaking bile into her abdominal cavity. She’s going to wait a couple of days in the hospital to see if the leak closes off on its own. If it doesn’t, there’s an esophageal treatment that might fix it, and if that doesn’t work, more surgery. She’s had nothing but ice chips since she entered the ER, and will probably have nothing but ice chips until Friday.

But she hurts less, and there are a whole lot of worse things this could have been. Her very best outcome is that this problem will resolve itself between now and Friday, without any further need for anesthesia or invasive procedures or surgery.

I told her you folks were keeping her in your thoughts and praying for her, and she told me to thank you. Huge thanks from me, too, that you have made time in your lives for my kid. We’re both so grateful.

Another update when I know more.

GOOD UPDATE

11:44 AM, NOV 29: Just talked to her. She’s feeling much better, though very weak. She’s having much less pain, and she managed to sleep pretty well through the night. There’s a chance she’ll be able to have something besides ice chips today, and if she does all right with it, she could go home tomorrow.

Thank you so much for keeping her in your thoughts and prayers.

UPDATE

12:32 PM, NOV 29: Her doctor was just in, and she gets to go ahead with the food trial, to see how she does. If she doesn’t start leaking bile again, she’ll be out of there soon.

FINAL UPDATE

9:58 AM, NOV 30 She did well all through the night, kept the food down, didn’t go back to the horrible pain, and she gets to go home today.

Thank you so much for hanging with me through this, and for keeping her in your thoughts and prayers. This is the absolute best outcome we could have wanted, and it happened. It was wonderful to know that she was never alone, that there were, throughout the day, other people who cared about her and what happened to her. Thank you so much, from both of us.

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