My mom was transferred back to a regular room after 3 days in the ICU. She underwent rigid bronchoscopy on Tuesday night. The doctors took tissue samples for culturing and discovered many blood clots in her left lung and cleaned them out. A part of her left lung is damaged but wasn’t bleeding that time so they figured the antibiotics would take care of it. At that point, they concluded that my mom has pneumonia.
Her x-rays for the following days showed continuous improvement, but we early Friday morning, my mom had another attack. The doctors were alarmed and advised my mom to consider surgery to remove the damaged part of her lung. They recommended one of the best surgeons around and he came over that evening to discuss his view on my mom’s condition.
To everyone’s surprise, the surgeon ended up refusing to do the operation. He believes that the bleeding came from the scratches in the respiratory tract caused by the bronchoscopy. He advised her to wait and return if her another attack happens. This left us pretty confused and doesn’t really help everyone’s anxiety, but my mom was comfortable with the surgeon’s suggestion so we have to respect that.
My mom was released from the hospital last Saturday night, and her tissue culture tests came out negative for everything, but we’re still waiting for final results whether it’s positive for TB. To be honest, I am happy that my mom’s out of danger, but the fact that they haven’t found out the root cause of the infection, bothers me. The doctors say that the antibiotics probably killed whatever caused it, so for peace of mind, I certainly hope they’re right and that’s it.
Two weeks in hospital left my mom pretty weak on her first day back home. She spent Sunday resting and regaining her strength and appetite for ‘normal’ food. I rang her up a couple of hours ago and she sounded pretty good, much like her normal self. She’s due for another x-ray on Saturday, and I am praying hard (would like to ask again for your prayers) that it will show that she’s recovering nicely and that it only improves going forward.
Thanks to everyone who reached out and prayed for my mom and our family, I really appreciate the support. To be honest, I have not been sleeping very well and found it difficult to concentrate at work and cried a few times in the office to relieve myself of the anxiety. I hope that my sleeps will be more restful now…
