Friday, July 21, 2006

Very Concerned - Third Bleeding Incident

We checked Mom in today at Hopkins. She had suffered from weakness, very bloody stools and fever the last few days. Her HCT was at 21.0 today down from 25.6 on Wednesday and 29 a week ago. Clearly the bleeding hasn't stopped. Dr. Hutcheon performed an endoscopy and colonoscopy today. In our brief conversation today he said he cauterized a couple more small areas and that she suffered from radiation gastritis. I'm concerned the VMP phase I may have been too much for our poor mother. She's receiving blood today and I pray that we can resolve this issue for the long term. What I've read about upper GI bleeds is pretty scary. He mentioned that this condition may be chronic but he seemed to reassure me that it was manageable. Another Dr. who came by seemed somewhat ominous in her comments but I didn't want to press the issue at the moment. I'm very concerned.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Bleeding Again

On June 28 Mom found blood in her stool again. She went back to the ER at Reston Hospital and was admitted with very low blood levels. To go back again so soon was very depressing for her and she remained in the hospital till yesterday. During her stay they performed a couple of endoscopies, an angiogram and a nuclear medicine scan. The two ulcers that were cauterized last time had still not fully healed but were not the source of the bleeding. She had diffuse bleeding around her upper stomach area that was hard to stop because there were so many sources. Dr. Plotner said the lining of her stomach looked very raw and this was called gastritis. I suppose this was probably due to the one Gemcitabine treatment she received. We're scheduled to see Dr. Laheru this week so we'll need to see what to do at this point. We've also scheduled a follow up with Dr. Cameron. It's a pretty discouraging setback. Mom lost a lot of weight in the hospital since they had her on a liquid diet for almost a week. We need to figure out how to prevent this from happening again.