Home (and driving me crazy)

The surgery went well, thankfully! For those of you that don't know, he had what is called a bronchial artery embolization. This is either the 8th or 10th of these that he has had. When he was followed by the clinic at UNC they did them rather frequently, but at the UW, they don't do them often at all. Gess's doc said that the last one of his patients that had one was over a year ago. Gess's lung bleeds have been increase in both frequency and severity, so a BAE was really the only option. In fact, we had discussed this with Dr. T and Gess was scheduled to see the interventional radiologists on Friday (the day he actually had the surgery) to set up a procedure on an outpatient basis. The procedure lasted about 2 1/2 hours, which was shorter than I had expected. The were able to locate one bronchial artery and when they pushed the dye through it they saw a small amount of blood, suggesting to them that this was the location of the bleed. It was consistent with where Gess told them that the blood was coming from (based on how it felt). So, they embolized that. They also looked for other arterial, but didn't locate any. Dr. T said that there could be more that they just didn't see, but hopefully they got the "big one" that has been causing all of the drama.

Gess spent another night at Hotel UW on the ICU floor and then was discharged today.

He is on pain meds, which leads to behavior that really annoys me. So I am trying to be patient, and since that doesn't work very well I am hiding in my room :) For some reason I have a very short tolerance for the drugged out behavior.

I am optimistic that this is going to mean much much less bleeding. For perspective, he had his last embolization 4 1/2 years ago, and the bleeding really didn't start to be a problem until the last 6-9 months. So...if we can go another 4 without huge bleeds, I will be a happy camper!

Now if we can just get the pain under control...]

Thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers that were sent our way. We really appreciate it!!

And for those of you that will ask--I am taking care of myself as much as possible. To be honest, the last couple of months have been extremely difficult on me. Last night was really difficult. Gess was being grumpy and short with me all day (bossy, snippy, I couldn't do anything right), and I left the hospital in tears. It is so stressful because I am worried about him and have all the emotions that go with that, so my fuse is pretty short. We also got into a fight over pain meds on the way home from the hospital. I find myself feeling completely overwhelmed at times with CF and that seems to be increasing. I am not exactly sure why this drugged out issue has such a huge effect on me, but it does. Even now I hear him stumbling around downstairs and I have to keep reminding myself to unclench my jaw! So...it is a process.