Tuesday, May 15, 2012

We both needed fixing

Mother's Day was a rough day.  DJ had some fairly significant swelling that, frankly, frightened me.  Ordinarily, I'm pretty calm when the $hit hits the fan and it's not as if I freaked out, but I know I gave off waves of concern and fear, which upset DJ.  Then, as I tried to distance myself from feeling terrible about frightening her, Bulldog decided to point out not just once, but twice, that I had frightened her. We called the doctor and at first she seemed to think we had not followed her instructions and she seemed to chastise me.  And when I returned to DJ, I swear she looked at me as if she had lost faith in me.

I was in a complete tailspin.

What happened was fixable.  The last day in the hospital, after capping DJ's catheter, I helped her to the restroom and the section of catheter, which was supposed to be taped to her abdomen, flopped down and she felt a slight tug.  The doctor thinks she may have had some slow bleeding into her tissue over the next day.  She saw DJ yesterday and was able to drain the blood from beneath the surface of the skin which made a world of difference to DJ's comfort and reduced the swelling dramatically.  She also removed the packing and the ace bandage to DJ's chest to look at her new breasts, which also are healing well.

The doctor and the physician's assistant that are treating DJ are great.  Before we saw them that morning, I had called the doctor three additional times on Mother's Day.  I felt embarrassed about interrupting her on her day off and she must have sensed my frazzled state because after the third call, as we were hanging up, I heard her say, "You're a good mom."  She fixed me, too.