ladydouji

Well I got to go and see my brother today. He's looking and feeling a lot better. We talked geeky things, I got to check out his new PSP. Ooooh pretty graphics. Also got to hear how the nurse mistook our mother as his wife. I nearly fell out of the chair laughing. And found out that his surgeon(while one of the best) really needs to work on his tact. Apparently he came out of the operating room once my brother was stable, went to my parents and said "Well he's young and he's strong" o_O Not the most comforting thing he could have said.

Some other good news is that I am ahead the game for Christmas shopping. So far I have my mom, aunts, neices and one cousin shopped for, and pretty mcuh everyone else figured out.

I finally got out to St Christus to visit my brother. He's still in the ICU and they don't expect him out until sunday at least. He looks, unsurprisingly, like shit. Pale, tubes and iv's everywhere. I got a glimpse of his hands and they didn't look right, bloodless and rubbery looking is the only way I can describe it. Like hands you would see on a doll. He was only vaguely aware of what was going on, couldn't speak because of the ventilator. The worse was when he needed to cough and couldn't(again because of the ventilator) we had to wait for the nurse to come and help clear him out with a tube that basically vacuums the phlegm out. In short he's really sick and is going to be that way for a while.

Called my mom looking for an update and found out that they didn't take Larry in for his surgery until seven.

Came home from a crappy day at work to find an email from my mom

"Larry is in the hopsital- looks like he is going to have to have surgery-
which could be pretty serious- call tonight when you get home- I may have
more news"

I call and turns out my brother needs to have surgery to remove abcesses from his lungs. They don't know what time he's going in, just sometime in the afternoon. I asked if mom wanted me out there, but as there wasn't anything for me to do out there they said no. SO tomorrow i'm gonna be calling them on every break for updates and be ready to bug out if they say come.

Will some-one please remind it's not always a good thing to go googling info about medical problems I did and found this

Most patients with lung abscess will not need surgery. About 5% of patients--usually those who do not respond to antibiotics or are coughing up large amounts of blood (500 mL or more)--may have emergency surgery for removal of the diseased part of the lung or for insertion of a tube to drain the abscess. Antibiotic treatment is considered to have failed if fever and other symptoms continue after 10-14 days of treatment; if chest x rays indicate that the abscess is not shrinking; or if the patient has pneumonia that is spreading to other parts of the lung.

Eeep sounds really nasty. At least I learned that the surgery has a low mortality rate(10-15%) but still really really nasty.