Karen has been doing fine since her stitches were removed. Everything has held together just fine, and there's no sign of trouble. She's been sleeping a lot still. Some day it seems she's only up 4 to 6 hours. I am a little concerned, but she's been on such heavy pain meds, I'm leaning towards those as the culprit. She does seem to be awake more often as we decrease the dose, just not by as much as I would have expected.
Karen was on a 25 mcg/hr fentanyl patch back before the surgery in February, and is only today dropping back down to 25 mcg. Even as far back as November, 25 mcg/h wasn't enough to sufficiently control her pain. She had tried the next step up, 37.5 mcg, but found she was sleeping most of the day and opted to be in a bit of pain rather sleep her days away. As the pain continued to slowly increase, she tried the 37.5 mcg on and off. This is actually a major part of what triggered the oncologist's suggestion back in December to see the surgeon about having the mass removed. On April 1st she left the hospital using a 100 mcg/hr fentanyl patch, and a lot of break through. So progress has certainly been made in returning to 25 mcg. Hopefully as we return to these lower doses she'll get back most of her day.
The only other thing worth mentioning is how much more careful we have to be with gluten now that Karen's using the full length of her intestines. While she had her ostomy we could get away with so much. I guess because the food leaves the body so quickly? Whatever the reason, we've gotten a bit spoiled, being able to cheat with wheat products without much of a reaction. Going back to a stricter diet is a bit disappointing and frustrating. We had hoped that part of the reason she had to have such a strict diet before the ostomy was due to the cancer that had been removed from her colon, and thought maybe things had eased up for good. Now that her ostomy is reversed, it would appear that isn't the case.
