We have had a bit of a crazy week here. Tuesday my mom called me and said she had severe abdominal pains, went to the er, they told her she had a kidney stone. This was somewhat weird because kidney stones typically hurt in your back, not just below your ribs on the right side. But doctors know best right? So we went with what they said, she drank a lot of water and took the pain meds they gave her to get through. By Friday morning she was hurting even more, still in the same spot, and said she hadn't passed anything so she went to her regular dr. Her regular dr said it didn't sound like kidney stones and referred her to a urologist just to be safe. The urologist saw her that day, said she didn't have a kidney stone, never did, and that her pancreas was extremely inflamed. He immediately sent her to Highland hospital to speak with a surgeon. They did a CT scan there, and she was admitted that day to the hospital. The surgeon at Highland said that her pancreas was so infected and swollen that he was classifying her as having septic, acute pancreatitis because her pancreas was actually poisoning her other organs around it. She was immediately put on an IV line with pain meds, antibiotic, potassium, and fluids. She told the surgeon that she had planned on toughing it out through the weekend, but had been convinced by other people that she needed to go in. The surgeon told her she could have died had she waited until Monday. So they began ultrasounds, more CT scans, and blood testing to find out what caused this. Typically your pancreas swelling and getting infected is caused by a hard hit to the stomach, alcoholism, gallbladder infection, or appendix infection. My mom is not an alcoholic, and wasn't hit in the stomach, so they tested her for the gallbladder and appendix. Both which came back negative for problems today, along with all of her other organs. So for now they are keeping her admitted and just pumping antibiotics in to cure the infection in her pancreas. They talked about doing surgery in the beginning to remove her pancreas, but removing it is completely life changing so they wanted to try the antibiotic route first. It seems to be helping, they're going to continue monitoring her, as well as running additional tests to try and find a cause for it. The good news is that the doctor is now saying he expects her to make a full recovery, it will just take a little bit to get things back in order, and that surgery is off the table for now at least. So we're just praying that things continue to improve and that she can come home soon!
Also this weekend, all 4 of my sons fish died. We thought they were sick, but it turns out that's not it.... it was me.... I cleaned out their tank, and noticed it was really dirty so I completely emptied it and scrubbed the sides with soap and water, also used a window cleaner. Please.... don't laugh at me. I didn't know any better. Turns out this is REALLY bad because it gets rid of the good bacteria that the fish need that's attached to the plastic sides, and the windex got back into the water once I filled it back up and probably poisoned them. If that wasn't bad enough, I filled the water back up in it and immediately put the fish back in. Again, please don't judge me, I didn't know, I've never cleaned it before.... But needless to say, they were all dead in the morning. Either from being shocked from being immediately put in untreated tap water that was probably too cold, or from windex poisoning. I will go to the grave with this and will never tell my son that I killed his fish on accident.
I'm entering finals week soon, and I am stressed out enough by things at home so I'm not real sure how this is going to turn out. I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope for the best....
Thanks for the suggestion!
