Hospital

Tuesday, I brought John to the VA hospital emergency room because he had been having severe stomach pain that wouldn't go away. At first we thought it was a bug, but when it persisted after several days, it was time to take him in. Took him there after work, arrived about 6 PM. They took him in right away, and I was allowed to go back in the little triage room with him. They took him for x-rays, and tried to draw blood. He had become so dehydrated since he hasn't been able to eat & drink for some time now. The blood was almost too thick to be drawn properly. They put two bags of saline into him the time that I was there, and a third was to be started. We went upstairs twice for CAT scans. They finally decided that he was having a problem with his pancreas. Not sure if it was cancer or pancreatitis. I hope it's the latter, because the big C is what Patrick Swayze died of. One of the worst cancers you can get, very high mortality rate. That is because they can't detect it in advance and once you experience pain from it, it has already spread to other organs making it impossible to stop. Nasty stuff. He was finally admitted into the hospital at 2:47 AM, I got to leave at 3 AM. I drove home, it took about an hour. Got up at 7 AM to get ready for work. It took them most of the day to get him into the main hospital. He is still there, and now they want to do a biopsy to try to rule out pancreatic cancer. The doctors really don't think that's what he has. On the "brigher side," it is not unusual for bypass surgery patients to experience pancreatitis afterwards. It happens. At least it can be cured in 80% of cases.