Wednesday's Update

After a rough weekend, yesterday Jeannette couldn't keep any food down, but today she's kept down a little Ensure and baby food.  Home Health is going to start coming to keep an eye on her, and in an interesting twist the Home Health woman assigned to Jeannette is the same one who worked with Justin when he had his back surgery years ago.  Emily's parents brought over a shower chair they had, and a walker for Jeannette to use.  In order to get Jeannette stronger and better situated, Tim took this week off from work.  As anything progresses we will keep you updated. 

An Overnight Stay

Jeannette spent Thursday night in NMC hospital.  She had been in Dr. Thomas's St. Albans office awaiting a regular appointment when she became unresponsive.  Tim and the nurses couldn't bring her back around, so Jeannette was taken to the hospital, which was really only feet away.  After regulating her blood pressure (which was extremely low) and hydrating her and watching her overnight, she was released back home on Friday afternoon. 

Jeannette had a good weekend last weekend, including sitting at the table with the family and eating a somewhat normal dinner.  Then the rest of the week was a slow slide downhill.  It seems that when Jeannette is drinking and eating enough and properly hydrated, she needs blood pressure medication to keep it within a healthy range.  However, when she's dehydrated and weak, the blood pressure medicine drives her too low.  Jeannette also may have missed some pills last week, and a combination of a number a factors seems to have caused her episode.

Tim is going to call Home Health on Tuesday and set up some regular visits from those nurses.  They will monitor Jeannette's blood pressure/draw blood and do some physical therapy with Jeannette to work on getting her strength back up. 

When we go a long stretch without updating this blog, it just means that the status quo is the status quo.  A lot of the time we are just plugging along.  Thank you all for your continued support.

Several hospital visits later...

Jeannette went to the ER at Northwestern Medical Center two weeks ago, complaining of pain in her esophagus and stomach.  After an X-ray showed no blockage or major issue, Jeannette was hydrated and sent home with Maalox with lidocaine to help with pain and to sooth any damage medications had caused to her stomach and throat.

After a week of treatment with the Maalox Jeannette felt as if her symptoms were no better, so her primary care physician Dr. Miller told her to go to the ER at Fletcher Allen.  That is where she and Tim spent this past Friday. There she was again hydrated, and after drinking the dreaded barium solution, she was given a CT scan.  The scan again showed nothing that accounted for her symptoms.

Just to be sure nothing had been missed, Fletcher Allen scheduled an endoscopy for today, which Justin and Jeff took Jeannette to.  After the tube had been sent down her esophagus, the doctor reported back that there were a few erosions in Jeannette's stomach, but that they were nothing major.  He is sending a sample to be biopsied, but said that these small issues shouldn't account for how poorly she's been feeling.  Jeannette was again hydrated, and spent some time discussing good food options and ways to eat to help get her back on track.  Slow and steady is the trick, since Jeannette has barely eaten anything for nearly a month at this point.


Jeannette will continue to follow-up with Dr. Miller and work to get herself back on an even keel.  Many of her other symptoms (fatigue, lack of appetite, nausea, dizziness) will likely be solved by simply getting back to a normal pattern of eating.

A Few Photos of the Visit (so far)

 

 Mary, Leo, and Jeannette:  The Guelpas!

 Cousin Eric and Jeff

The Siblings again

 Henry, Mary, Martha, Leo, and Tim

A few updates

Thanks for your patience, everyone.  It's hard for us to post frequently when a) not a lot is changing, and b) not a lot is positive.  However, here is a little bit of an update.

The good news first: tomorrow (Saturday) Jeannette's sister Mary Wiethake, brother-in-law Henry, and nephew Eric are coming into town from Colorado!  They are visiting until Tuesday and staying with Justin and Emily.  On Sunday Jeannette's brother Leo and his partner Martha are coming up for the day and there will be a big family dinner at Justin and Emily's house.  It will be a nice chance for all the siblings to be together.

In other news, things haven't  progressed much from the last post.  Jeannette has good days and bad days.  She isn't sleeping well through the night and yesterday got a prescription for that.  Today she received hydration and medicine to help with a few digestion issues she's been having.  Jeannette has been on and off some other drugs, so it's hard to know which of her symptoms are caused by what.  Side effect of the medicine, side effects from coming off the medicine, a need for new medicine?  It's not easy to sort out.

Hopefully my next post will include pictures of Jeannette with her family, and a few shots from the Wiethake's visit with us. 

Holding Pattern

Today we received the results of the spinal tap: everything was clear!  The findings showed no abnormal cells and no elevated proteins, which means that there is no cancer on Jeannette's brain lining.

However, this good news was dampened by the fact that the oncologist has no clue what is causing Jeannette's symptoms.  She is still extremely parched even though she is drinking a huge amount and received IV hydration today and yesterday.  She is fatigued and yet has insomnia, can't eat even though she isn't really nauseated, and is generally just unwell.  Without a diagnosis, the doctor said he cannot treat her symptoms.  All the tests they have done on her (including the spinal tap, blood work, kidney function, etc) have come back clean.  Other than the obvious (lung cancer), Jeannette's sickness cannot be explained.

This is obviously very discouraging, but Dr. Thomas is starting Jeannette on a few new medicines and is hoping to see a difference.  He believes if we can get her sleeping more regularly then she will feel better want to eat more regularly, and that in turn will make her more well overall.  Only time will tell.

Staying Put

After having a good weekend, Jeannette was back to feeling less well today.  Also, Dr. Thomas has scheduled her follow-up appointment from the spinal tap for Wednesday afternoon.  For both of these reasons, the trip to the Cape has been officially called off for this summer.  It's too bad, because the entire family was looking forward to it, but it is the right thing to do. 

Hopefully Wednesday's appointment will give us more answers on how to keep Jeannette feeling better, and we will post another update after that.