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 Posted: 01/04/08 - 23:11 Post subject: Green Light Surgery causes swelling of prostate, pinches off |
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My father had green light in October. He is still having a lot of problems. We just learned this week what went wrong. After the green light surgery his prostate swelled. It got so large it cut off its own blood supply. The loss of blood supply caused his prostate to swell even more. It got so big it pushed against his lower rectum, pinching it shut. He couldn't poop solids.
For five weeks he had diarrhea. Nobody understood it. He went to the emergency room. They did tests and sent him home. He continued to deteriorate.
He went to a new doctor. She put him on the Brat Diet which is supposed to be good for diarrhia. Unfortunately, the Brad Diet is terrible for Type-2 diabetics. He got weak fast and several days later he passed out in the bathroom. They called EMS, his insulin count was so low he was verging on a coma.
They stabilized him and rushed him into the emergency room where he sat for over 14 hours.
The next morning he got a colonoscopy (something similar with a smaller diameter). The doctor saw that a large portion of his colon looked white and he thought the tissue might be dying or dead. He gave my father a colostomy, closed him up with the idea of observing him for a day or two.
That night they gave my dad morphine for pain and a nausea pill. The combination made him intensely delusional and hyperactive. He had a gastric tube, three IVs and an arterial line. When the nurses left, he fell out of bed. He had just enough presence of mind to push his "call button."
The next night, they gave him the very same combination of medication and he went through the very same intense reaction.
From that point on my family decided that we would not leave my father alone for one minute at that hospital. The staff resented it, but we decided that it wasn't worth the risk of another medical mistake to spare their feelings.
The next morning the doctor thought things were not looking good and they took my father back down for surgery. This time they gave him a 50/50 chance of surviving. When the doctor touched his colon, though, it pinked up. It was the first good thing to have happened since this whole mess started.
Over the next week dad seemed to improve. We got physical therapy to work with him daily. After a week we went to a rehab facility.
Tonight, a month after being in rehab, my father is back in the hospital. It turns out that he hasn't been getting enough nutrition the whole time he has been in the rehab. He has been, for want of a better word, starving. Part of it, the doctors say, has to do with the colostomy. Food just passes through to the bag too quickly for the nutrition to be adequately absorbed. But some of it has to do with the rehab facility just not "getting it." He had been doing physical and occupational therapy daily for the entire time he was there, but his stamina hadn't been improving. It exhausted him every time. He had been losing weight, getting thinner and paler... At one point they thought he was anemic. If he didn't have enough iron, they explained, he couldn't oxygenate his blood adequately. That would affect both his ability to exercise and his stamina. They were going to do tests, but in the end, they decided not to ... Go figure.
So tonight he's back in the hospital. Eighty-one years old. Malnourished. Swollen prostate. Pinched off rectum. Mistake after mistake after mistake. I can hardly believe he's been put through all of this. It's hard to trust the doctors who have made so many bad calls, bad judgments. I mean, don't they know the risks of Green Light Surgery? Why didn't anybody recognize the symptoms before the problems began to multiply? Are there any real experts on this procedure?
If you have the surgery and get diarrhea, get your prostate checked. It could be badly swollen following the surgery. If you don't check it, watch out. This thing can cascade badly...
Of course, any information would be greatly appreciated – especially a source of good information re: the problems we are having. Dad’s not out of the woods yet.
Thanks. |
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