Interesting Night

Last night went quite well except for one interesting episode.  At around 3am Kevin began to say that his chest hurt.  He had just done some of his deep breathing exercises so we thought perhaps that was the problem.  However, within a couple of minutes his legs began to shake and those shakes slowly began to take over his whole body.  We called the nurse who eventually called the head nurse and doctor on call.  In the mean time, he was having stabbing pains on the right side of his chest.  So much so that he was doing all he could to press on it and try to make it stop or at least subside.  No such luck.  The pain then began to radiate up to his right shoulder and the shakes became quite violent.  The nurses then decide to order an EKG as well as some blood work just to be on the safe side.  Now, I can count on one hand the number of times Kevin has had pain that made him very emotional but this not only did that but caused him to experience some fear as to what in the world was going on.  After a normal EKG test and approximately an hour of on and off violent shaking and pain, our nurse convinced Kevin to take an additional shot of pain medication given straight into his IV.  This seemed to do the trick and around 4am his body finally relaxed and the pain began to subside.


Later on we discovered this is common for patients who have had surgery done laproscopically.  They say it is caused by air, pumped into the body during surgery, becoming stuck under the diaphragm on the right and there is a nerve there that shoots pain sensations from the chest right up into the shoulder.  (However, it would have been nice to know that was a possibility that evening before this all began, or even after surgery.)


That said,  he is doing great!!  His goal today is stand with assistance and to walk around five times.  As of 12:30pm, he has already stood, walked twice AND had a chance to get cleaned up.  YEAH!!


Resting upon all your prayers,
Christine (& Kevin)