I got a chance to ask the doctors about the catheter they put in and what I overheard. They said "salvage" is the medical term for treating the infected mesh (or organ, or tissue) as opposed to replacing it. It doesn't imply impending doom, or have anything to do with the odds of success. I asked how likely it will be that this will save the the mesh. They said there really isn't very much data for this thing, and most of that data actually comes from Mayo Clinic. But there isn't enough of it to come up with something as specific as odds. They do, however, think it's reasonable to expect this to work. But even if the odds were stacked against us, the alternative to trying to salvage the mesh would be to replace it, and they said that's something they'd really like to avoid with Karen.
They showed us how to flush the wound with antibiotics, and set up home healthcare to visit us at home. They've also decided against the IV antibiotics they had originally planned, stating that Karen seemed to be in good health and showed no signs of the infection moving from the wound into the rest of her body; she hasn't even had a low grade fever in quite a while. Unfortunately, the antibiotic flush is something we're going to have to do three times a day for 30 days.
Karen's pain is still a bit elevated, around a 4 or 5 out of 10. When the palliative team visited this morning, I feel Karen was too focused on describing what she thought to be the source of the pain, than the way it was feeling. They told her increasing the dosage of the patch wouldn't help with the pulling from the catheter or pains from the sutures themselves. Since then Karen has mentioned a dull ache, which is certainly something that would have been helped by upping the patch dosage. Luckily they prescribed oral "breakthrough" pain medication she can use frequently if she needs to. And I'm also sure if we called the palliative team they would just up the dosage for us.
She's getting up less and less often at night, and seemed quite awake today. Food is still going through fine. And more normalcy seems to be returning to her life. Everyone seemed to think Karen was ready to head home. The last thing they were waiting on was a confirmation from the home healthcare provider before discharging us. They sent us home with a bunch of prescriptions, although most of them were just over were counter the treatments for constipation. We got discharged around 5pm, but with filling the new prescriptions and packing the car, we didn't make it home until after 7. It sure is a relief to be home though. It's a little scarey to think about how 2 to 3 days turned into 2 to 3 weeks.
