Bowel Obstruction & Ca. of Bladder

Jay Jay (((((((((((hugs))))))))))))) so sorry that you both have to be going through all of this.

Jay-Jay:

So sorry that you and your husband are having to go through all of this.

My thoughts are with you.............................

Thank you all for your good wishes! :) Your support and kindness is very much appreciated.

Tina, I really, really wish I COULD give you some good news, but the long and the short of it is, I think my husband is going to die. He has gone from 190 lbs. on January 27, when he suffered the stroke to 145 lbs. He has NO appetite to speak of. Eating makes him nauseated. They've done all sorts of tests and scans, and cannot find a cause. His total intake tonight was 1 small plastic container of jello, plus a bit of pineapple juice (he's taking fluids okay, but HATES Ensure, Resource, etc.) If this keeps up, and it's been this way for a number of weeks, he is not going to survive.

Now, in my nursing experience, I've only discovered two things that can cause this severe a loss of appetite. One is cancer, with a bowel obstruction, and the other is terminal kidney failure. His creatinine and urea have gone back to normal since the bladder hemorhage stopped. What else could it be??

Earle, to answer your question, the way the doctor explained it, a pseudo-obstruction happens because the person gets so sick that the bowel just shuts down. I guess peristalsis temporarily stops, creating the same symptoms as a physical obstruction.

Okay, guess I'd better give the whole long story here...

Roger has been having heart problems (a-fib, angina) for a number of months now. He finally consented to have an angiogram done in late January. They took him off his coumadin, never thought to give fragmin as insurance against blood clots. The day after the angiogram he suffered a stroke. He was in hospital for nearly a month, did quite well in rehab. He was home for about 3 weeks. His appetite wasn't great, and steadily got worse. His last week home, his intake dwindled to almost nil, and he started to hemhorrage into the bladder. He's been having ongoing problems with incontinence and UTI's for a couple of years now, and has been followed fairly closely by a urologist. While in hospital, he had some slight bleeding, which they said was due to coumadin (INR was high) but they put him on Cipro 'just in case.'

Anyway, this was a really gross hemhorrage, with huge blood clots, which progressed to total urinary retention. (Hemoglobin dropped from 150 to 109 in the space of 8 days!) They had to wait for the bleeding to subside before they could do a cysto on him. The same day the cysto was scheduled, he went into a bowel obstruction. So, they anethetized him, scoped the bladder AND bowel, and found....nothing. Just a lot of inflammation in the bladder. CT scan showed constriction of the left ureter where it joins bladder, and 3 lesions in the R kidney, two of which may be cysts.

After the anesthetic, he aspirated, went into a-fib, and had a small MI, followed by an episode of pneumonia and CHF. They were just nicely getting THAT cured, when he had bowel obstruction #2.

So, needless to say, they are reluctant to try anything else until his health improves a bit. Latest x-ray shows some lingering pneumonia in both lungs. Meanwhile, the urologist is away, and doesn't come back until Thursday. I could get another urologist to look at him, but the poor man's been through SO much, I figure a few more days isn't going to hurt. If ONLY his appetite would improve!