I had some stuff written down from the beginning, but as things got busier, I didn't do so well. I'll try to remember things as they happened.
February 26, 2016
Charlie and Sam went in to the doctor today. They haven’t
been able to get over the sickness that’s been going around. When the doctor
looked down Charlie’s throat, he said there was a lump in there. He said it
could just be something that happened with the sickness, or it could be
something that he’s had for a long time and nobody has noticed. He also said
Charlie has pneumonia. He said after he’s over that, he needs to come back in
and the doctor will check out the lump again to see if it was sickness related.
March 16, 2016
Charlie went back to the doctor today. He said the lump is
still there, but it had changed. He said he didn’t think that it was anything
dangerous, but Charlie could get it checked just to be sure. I think I finally
convinced him to get it checked out, even if only for his own piece of mind.
Friday, April 8, 2016
We headed to the Ear Nose and Throat doctor in Billings.
The doctor was a pretty nice guy. We are in disagreement
about what his conclusion was. I heard that his initial instinct was that it
was benign but he was still going to look at it further to make
sure. Charlie heard that he was concerned and this is something that we
definitely need to get looked at. I think Charlie was just in panic mode They got a CT scan
scheduled for later that day. We killed time by doing our food shopping.Then it was back over to
the hospital. They’re really efficient there and we were in and out within
probably half an hour. They said that no news is good news, so we hope not to
hear anything from them in the next few days Then it was more shopping and back home. I’m sure everything is ok.
They called a few days later to say that it was a large fluid-filled sac that didn't appear to be cancer, but they needed to do a biopsy to confirm.
May 10, 2016
Back to the doctor to get the biopsy. The doctor ended up draining 14mL of fluid from it. Charlie felt a lot better right after that. The doctor said to give it a month and see if it was going to fill up again, and then we would discuss the next steps. He didn't want to do surgery right away because of where the cyst was. It would be difficult to get to, and may end up doing more harm than good. It might even mean cutting his neck open and moving around all the important life-sustaining stuff you have in that area. We're hoping that this is kind of a one-time thing, and that draining it today will be all that needs to be done.
Friday, June 17th
We went back to the ENT today. He tried draining the cyst
again. There wasn’t much fluid there, only 3mL, which is a good sign. That
means the cyst didn’t fill back up. Charlie had thought that it was filling
back up because his swallowing seemed harder and his snoring had come back. (It had stopped for a couple days after the initial draining) He
just wasn’t sure if it was all in his head or not. The doctor talked about
different things that could be done that would be the least evasive. He talked
about making a big incision down the whole thing so that any fluid that built
up would just drain down Charlie’s throat. He also talked about poking holes in
the cyst for the fluid to drain, hoping that the holes wouldn’t close back
over. He still didn’t want to remove the whole thing because of the risk.
Charlie is supposed to come back in a couple weeks to see how things are going.
The next day (June 18), Charlie went to Scout Camp with Sam, and he did fine the whole day. Then on Sunday (June 19), Charlie was feeling pretty sick. We assumed this was just the sickness that everyone else had. He stayed in bed most of the day. He felt a lot better by Monday (June 20), so he went to work. After a couple hours, he cancelled the rest of his clients and went back to bed. He ended up getting a fever of 102. On Tuesday (June 21), he woke up feeling worse and even threw up. He told me he thought he should go in to see the doctor. We decided to take him and Amelia in. She had been having a hard time getting over the sickness as well. We called the clinic in Lovell to set up an appointment. The earliest they had was 4:00 that afternoon. I went on with the day trying to take care of the sick kids and get my house cleaned up. They called around 12:00 to say that they had an opening at 1:00 if we wanted to come in. Then it was a scramble to get everyone ready and get the boys over to my parents' house.
We got back to the clinic room and the nurse started checking Charlie's vitals. She must have been pretty concerned because she went to go get the doctor right away. At this point, I still thought it was just the sickness going around. Apparently, he had a high fever, high blood pressure, and high pulse rate, plus his throat was really swollen. The doctor came in and started talking to Charlie. That's when I found out that Charlie hadn't even been able to hardly drink water the last couple days (I guess it was something he just forgot to mention) and he was getting pretty dehydrated. The doctor started saying things like "medical emergency" and whatnot, so it was getting pretty serious. She called the ENT, and he wanted Charlie to come to Billings right away. They took Charlie to get some blood drawn. At this point, the doctor checked on Amelia. Amelia got some medicine, and another dose to give the next day if she wasn't doing better by then. It seems like everything takes FOREVER when you're in a hurry. We finally got out of the doctor's office. I called my mom to tell her she would be taking care of the boys while we went to Billings (I realized a day or two later that I don't think I actually asked her if she would do it).
I ran home to pack some clothes just in case we had to stay overnight. I was pretty proud of myself. I packed for an overnight stay for the entire family in 15 minutes. We headed over to my parents' house so Charlie could get a priesthood blessing and we could say goodbye to the boys, then we headed to Billings. I don't know if people were driving even slower than usual, but it was one of the longest drives to Billings I've ever had. Charlie tried to sleep on the way. He woke up probably around Frannie and asked if we were about there. It was a long drive.
I don't remember what time we got there, but the clinic was already closed. We got to the ENT's room, and they started right away trying to get Charlie feeling better. They drained off a total of 40mL of fluid from the cyst. They got him an IV and some steroids. Charlie started feeling better. his voice was sounding better and he was able to swallow. He even told the doctor, "Nothing you do is pleasant." The doctor laughed at that, probably just as much from humor as relief that he was able to joke around. I think at this point I was still hoping that we would be able to go home that night after they got him rehydrated. Sadly, that was not the case. They wanted him on lots of antibiotics to help get the infection under control, so he was admitted into the hospital. Luckily, Charlie's cousin graciously let me stay at their place.
We kept hoping Charlie would be able to get surgery done and get back home. This was not the case. It seemed like a constant pattern of anitbiotics, steriods, no food/water in case of surgery, trips to the doctor's office to check on progress, then back to the room. Amelia got sick of the hospital room pretty quickly, so we spent a lot of time wandering the halls. We also went for car rides to go get food. Charlie ate lots of milkshakes when he was allowed, so we did a lot of milkshake runs.
My dad brought the boys one day for them to come visit. It was really nice to see them. We had all been missing each other. We did FaceTime whenever Amelia would get really grouchy. It seemed to calm her down.
My mom sent me a picture of Brett's new favorite spot: out on the steps in her garage blowing bubbles.
On Friday (June 24), Charlie was finally able to be discharged. The doctor wanted to wait on surgery because Charlie's throat was still really infected, and he wanted to get the infection down farther. Charlie was sent home with a month of antibiotics, and then in a month we would come back and decide what to do from there.
By Monday (June 27), Charlie was feeling like he was going back downhill.It was getting hard for him to swallow, and he had a light fever. He called the ENT, and the ENT wanted him back up in Billings. We packed up again (this time I'm pretty sure I asked my mom if she would watch the boys) and headed out. This trip wasn't near as bad since the situation was quite so pressing. We got to the doctor's office, and Charlie had to go through everything again. They drained 15mL this time. It was more of the same, antibiotics, steriods, etc. for the next couple days.
Charlie was schedule for surgery on Wednesday. We were told that it could be anywhere from 10am-2pm, depending on what else was going on in the surgery department. My mom came and brought the boys to spend some time. Charlie's dad also came up.
Later, they told us that they had a bunch of emergencies in surgery that day, so it would be more like 4:00 before they could get to him. I decided to take the kids out for a while. I think we went to eat (can't remember for sure) and my mom needed to go to Costco (I think). I found out far too late that the cafeteria downstairs actually had good food. I thought it was the same stuff that was on Charlie's menu. This was not the case. It would have saved me a lot of trips if I would have known.
We found a park close to the hospital that was pretty fun.
Sam climbed into this little thing and it started spinning. After a while, he yelled, "Mommy? Can you come get me out of this thing?!?!" Haha! He couldn't get it to stop.
Then we headed back over to the hospital since it was almost 4 and I wanted to be sure I was there when they took Charlie back. I think it ended up being closer to 6 or 7 before they took him back.
The whole time during this visit, the doctor told us he was going to do a marsupialization (just cutting it open instead of taking it out), but the last time he visited us, he told us he and the surgeon had decided it would be better to take it out completely. I was glad to hear that. We were wanting to have it out completely, but we were going with the doctor's recommendation because we honestly had no idea what the best course of action would be.
I asked them about how long it would be, but since they hadn't done anything quite like this before, they didn't really know. They said it would be at least and hour because it took 45 minutes to get the anesthesia stuff done. Most likely, it would take 2 hours, but probably more like 3 hours, but it could take even longer than that. Charlie had told me that I didn't need to wait around the hospital that whole time. The doctors had my number and the nurse would call me with updates. We stayed for probably half and hour or so (can't really remember the times of things) and then headed out to get some dinner. I'm thinking we did something in between (maybe that's when we went to Costco), then headed to Subway to get some dinner. Right when I pulled into the drive-through, the nurse called to say that they were just sewing him back up and then they would be done. I pulled out of the drive-through and headed back to the hospital. The doctors came out and told us that everything went great. They were able to do everything through his mouth, so they didn't have to cut his neck open or do a tracheotomy. It was basically a best-case scenario. The one surprise we had was the feeding tube they put in. That was never mentioned to us. It would have to stay in for 7 days.
We grabbed some dinner downstairs in the cafeteria, then my mom took the boys and headed over to Charlie's cousins house (who was nice enough to let my family stay there for the night) and Gil headed back home. I stayed with Charlie for a while, just making sure he was ok. He wasn't too happy about the feeding tube (we had family pictures schedule the following week, plus a family reunion)
The next day (June 30) my mom took Brett back to Lovell and Sam stayed to play with cousins. I headed back over to the hospital. We had to learn how to feed Charlie properly. It wasn't too complicated.
Charlie was discharged that afternoon. We rushed home to get haircuts for all the boys for pictures a few days later.
Charlie took the tape off so the feeding tube wasn't as noticeable for family pictures.
Initially, we had asked if he could get the feed tube out a couple days early so that he wouldn't have it in during the family reunion. They said that was ok. Then one of the doctors was out of town that day and he wanted to be able to look at Charlie's throat when the feed tube came out. We ended up having to take an entire day (July 6) away from the family reunion to drive to Billings and get it out. That was quite a bit of time, considering the family reunion was only 3 or 4 days. It had gotten really annoying. I think it may have been partially plugged because the last couple days it would explode liquid more frequently when we were doing feedings.
Charlie was happy to get the feed tube out. He wasn't happy that the doctor put him on a clear liquid diet the rest of the day, full liquid diet the next day, and soft foods after that. He wanted to just get back to eating normally.
He was doing a lot better, but he was still having some issues. He took Sam on a camping trip on weekend. He got choked so bad on a piece of hamburger that it really worried him. He called the doctor and explained his symptoms. The doctor said it sounded like Thrush. So we headed back up to Billings (July 19) and that was the case. He got some antibiotics for it and we went on home.
I'm pretty sure there hasn't been anything since then, but so much has happened, that I really can't remember. Charlie's doing a lot better. He's able to eat just fine, and the best part is that HE DOESN'T SNORE ANYMORE!!!!!!! That's what makes us think that he's had this thing for years (he's snored at least our entire married life) and it just recently grew to the point of being visible through the mouth. Here's to hoping we're done with this whole thing!
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