January 31, 2021 - the Medical Saga of Vic's insides

OK, it occurs to me that I'm spending WAY TOO MUCH time in my own head. A good friend just reached out to me, and I nearly dumped all the tiny (& gross) details of the last several weeks on her. Can we say, "too much information"? NOBODY needs to know all that except maybe family and close personal friends. I edited and edited until it wasn't too gross before replying to her msg. Nothing about catheters, blood in the urine, etc. Vic is doing well-ish, considering that every step forward ended up setting him back several steps. Here goes, for posterity, or something: Over a year ago, he was about to have surgery for an enlarge prostate - 5 times bigger than normal, we just found out. Put on hold because of COVID 19. Then a couple of months ago, he developed a UTI (unusual for men), got an Rx for that, then began having blood in the urine, the UTI apparently exacerbated by kidney stones in both kidneys, so surgery for those, which involved inserting a catheter and stents that were supposed to bypass his enlarged prostate and drain the urine, all 3 supposedly being removed after a week, and the catheter was, but the stents ended up going missing and without the catheter, urine apparently began backing up into the kidneys and cause excrutiating pain. Back to the doc, re-inserted the catheter, and over the next few days felt somewhat better. Then we had a consult with the urologist who's supposed to operate on Vic's prostate, and he said, "Hey, I can remove that catheter AND the stents for you today, if you want!" It was too attractive an offer to pass up. BUT, he was unable to find the stents. I can only imagine how painful the SEARCH for them must have been! So, back in went the catheter to his now super sore & painful man-parts. He's scheduled for a CT scan in 5 days to try to locate the stents, and HOPEFULLY, the week after that, the actual prostate surgery, which will be the beginning of a NEW round of soreness recovery and another catheter "for about a week" so they say. All that is dependant on total personal cleanliness and avoiding any infection of the catheter site. Or any infection at all. His poor bod has really been through it. Feb 1, 2021 He's weak, and has nearly no appetite. BAD combination. He tells me each mealtime what sounds OK to eat, then often can't eat all of his portion of what I fix. He's losing weight - even his wedding ring just fell off. He seems to be getting weaker. It's pretty scary to me. The Bishop and John Fowler came and gave him a priesthood blessing this afternoon. But until Friday, we're in a holding pattern. I'm urging him to call Dr Henderson to see about having a "procedure" done sooner rather than later, to find and remove the stents, AND the catheter. I really hate to thinking of waiting nearly 2 weeks for his surgery, and that's IF they can find a surgeon that day for Vic. If not, it's 2 weeks AFTER that. Tomorrow Lilian's Clean Queen team comes in the morning, and we need them SO MUCH! We've been much more focused on Vic than any homemaking. One interesting thing is that I've discovered how much of MY slack Vic normally takes up now that he hasn't been able to do it. I told him this, and he said, "I wondered when you'd notice that!"