PEG in place

Yesterday Wendy had a PEG - percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy - so she can receive nourishment directly into her stomach, bypassing the increasingly unreliable muscles in her throat that cause her to choke when food or fluid 'go down the wrong way.' This won't prolong her life but like the ventilator to help her breathe while she is sleeping, it will help make her remaining time more comfortable. Today I spoke to the anesthetist and the surgeon (yesterday, with David helping us, our priority was to get her home as soon as we could, rather than hang around waiting for a break between one operation and the next). The operation took six minutes, the anesthetic preparation took about 20 minutes, because the anesthetist, a caring and considerate disciple of the senior man she saw for preoperative assessment, was cautious and took great care to avoid risk of stressing her weakened respiratory muscles. Today, understandably, she has had some postoperative pain and this morning she spiked a fever (101.5 F) that alarmed me briefly; but as the day progressed, she brightened up and with enough medication to control her pain, she has had a reasonably comfortable day, all things considered. The fever went away and hasn't come back so I guess it was just one of those post-operative fevers, just a bit higher than usual. Tomorrow the nutritionist comes and we will have our first lesson in and experience of using the PEG to get adequate quantities of fluid and food into her system. By the end of the day she was looking and acting a whole lot better and brighter than she had early this morning. She's a tough old bird, it takes more than a little operation to knock her down for long.