Yesterday's procedure

On Friday I posted about how Casey had gone for his 2 week followup after his surgery. They had discovered that part of his right lung is collapsed and it looked like it might be due to some mucus and stuff blocking the air way not allowing the lung to fully inflate. They scheduled another bronchcoscopy for yesterday.

So we prepared for yet another procedure at the hospital. Casey's poor arms are all bruised up from all the IV's he's had the last couple of weeks. We arrived at the hospital and filled out the paperwork and was shortly taken back to the room to be prepared for the procedure. This time it was done in the GI lab instead of surgery, Casey was told to change into the gown and they closed the curtain. Shortly after he was done I could hear a nurse talking on the other side of the curtain, I told Casey that sounded like someone I know and decided to check. I had worked with this nurse when I worked at the Dr's office and she was one of my favorite nurses. I knew she worked at the hospital now and I THOUGHT she might work in the GI lab but I couldn't remember for sure. So I check and sure enough it was her! We chatted for a bit and then the other nurse came in to prep Casey.

After awhile the procedure was over and the Dr came out to tell me what he had found. He was carrying one of those sheets that prints off the pictures that he took while he was there. I could see there were images as he walked up and I could see something and for a second my heart sank, could it really be ANOTHER tumor? Thankfully even though it was only a few seconds which felt like forever he was across the room and talking to me. He showed me the images and said what we were looking at was swelling in his airway, most likely caused by the surgery. Here's what he showed me on the sheet, (don't worry no gross pictures, just a diagram).

This is a diagram of the lung, the left you see is made up of 2 chambers or lobes.
The right is made up of 3. This is the side Casey had the tumor on. The lower lobe which has the line through it is the one they removed when they removed the tumor. The middle one where the line from the word "blocked" is pointing at is where the blockage is. So the blockage is at the entrance to that lobe due to swelling. He said its swollen so much he couldn't even get the scope down there to see if there is any built up mucus and such in there (which was the thought on Friday). We have been bouncing between these two groups of Dr's. The surgeon and the lung specialists (yes I know what their called I just can't spell it). So the lung specialist is who did the scope this time. He was going to call the surgeon to see what he recommended. In the mean time he prescribed some predinzone (steroid) to help reduce the swelling. We are still waiting for the Dr's to decide what to do next. I'm sure it will be at least another office visit and another CT scan to see if the lung is inflating properly.

Yesterday I had mentioned on my facebook about how Casey was coughing up blood in the morning before his procedure. We talked to the Dr about that and he said that most likely the blood was from the surgery but it wasn't able to come up because of the swelling. He said as the swelling goes down hopefully Casey will be able to cough all the mucus and blood up. We are hopeful that this is the end of the complications!

Casey is hoping to be able to return to work sooner then expected but we'll see with this new development. We have seen God working big time during this time of Casey's illness and not being able to work to earn money. Thankfully we had some money set aside in savings that should float us by. However that takes us down to almost no savings and that concerns us a little. But we know our God is faithful and will provide for our needs. :)

This concludes today's human biology class.