This isn't good. My father-in-law, A, who underwent a prostatectomy a few weeks ago, may very well have a blood clot, which could cause a stroke or a fatal heart attack.
The last few days, the veins in his legs have been bothering him, and last night, one of his legs swelled up. He put in a call to the office of the Veterans Administration hospital physician who performed his surgery. My mother-in-law, D, came upstairs to tell me this a few minutes ago. My background as a medical copyeditor prompted me to say that the problem could be a blood clot. Just after she'd gone back downstairs, she came back up to ask why I always had to be right—the physician called back to say that yes, indeed, it could be a blood clot, and it could be higher than his leg, and he should get to the VA hospital emergency room right away.
D and A just left. I hope he'll be okay. He and I have had a stormy relationship over the years, but I'd like for him to be around a while longer. He's 70.
Updated 6:47 p.m., 6/26/06: Amazingly, A and D are now back home. A doesn't have a blood clot; he has an infection in his leg. What caused it, no one knows. I've suggested that he get tested for diabetes, because he seems to get infections frequently lately.
Whew. Bullet dodged. Must've been all those good thoughts you all sent out.
sandwich generation freelancer self-employed in-laws intergenerational prostate cancer Veterans Affairs EditorMom
2 comments:
I'll be sending some prayers your way, sweetheart. Hopefully it was caught in time. This month has been just generally awful, I think.
Thanks, FLS.
Yep, June has been rather unfriendly to people I care about, including you.
My next-door neighbor, Mary, who runs a day care group in her home and has provided excellent care to my two sons and is an all-around sweetheart, went in to the hospital recently so doctors could biopsy what they thought was a cyst on her gallbladder. When they inserted an ultrasound-guided biopsy needle, they hit a cyst on the back side of her liver that there was no way they could have seen. It was filled with bile, which proceeded to fill her body. Mary, about 50 and in seemingly excellent physical shape, had to undergo emergency surgery so that the docs could clean her out, so that she wouldn't die from sepsis or peritonitis. They'd been giving her nourishment intravenously, but her veins just had had enough and some of them collapsed. It's going to be a long road back to good health for her, and the docs still can't operate to remove the cyst. Mary's so dependable and trustworthy that she'd the woman every parent in the neighborhood lists as an alternative emergency contact on their kids' school paperwork.
Before Mary went in to the hospital, she talked with my mother-in-law about MIL's problematic neck disks, FIL's prostatectomy, and my husband Ed's biceps rupture—after my having broken my wrist about a year ago—and suggested that we consider having our home blessed, because some black clouds sure seemed to be following us around.
I guess those clouds are all around.
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