Karen seems to be getting more sleep at night, and today she seemed to be doing somewhat better emotionally, but progress otherwise has been slow. She's still taking a lot of different things to help with bowel movements, but things are slowing down and she is going less often, which feels counterintuitive to me. When she does go, it's mostly diarrhea, and not solid stool. They saw stool backed up in the intestines when they did the x-ray yesterday. So what they think is happening is fluid is now able to go around the stool, but the stool itself is staying in place. This explains both why her stomach is somewhat less distended - fluid can go around - and why all that going doesn't seem to be helping anymore - the stool isn't moving. Everyone assumes it's just a matter of time, but how much time, no one can say.
Her wound is still open, but the skin looks a little loose in the area, perhaps a bit stretched from earlier distention? It's finally starting to look better to me though. Our concern was that we can see what appears to the mesh showing through the opening, which is almost a half inch tall by two inches across. A wound nurse came in and we got to ask her about it. She told us we could very well be seeing the mesh, but open wounds like this will pull closed on their own as they heal. She said they regularly deal with openings much larger than this. The reason they don't like to suture or staple them closed is that it can trap the fluids or even things from the air under the skin, and cause an abscess. She said the human body is pretty amazing and knows what it's doing.
Her pain level has been as low as a 1 or 2 on a scale of 0 to 10, and she even refused some scheduled pain medication this morning because she didn't feel she needed it. They've finally taken her off the PCA, as she hadn't been using it at all. Since they don't allow you to shower with the PCA, she was able to have her first real shower since she came into the hospital. Sure they do bed baths, but it's just not the same. Another advantage to being off the PCA is she doesn't have to wear the pulseox on her finger 24/7 anymore. This added freedom made it possible for us to go out to the little desert garden area out front, and sit on a bench under a tree by the fountain. All in all, I think she had a good day.
