Dr. Kamell just came by. He deals in palliative care. He and his colleague spent a bit of time with us asking questions and forming a plan for palliative care.
They want Marshall to stay in the hospital for at least two more days so that they can be sure their plan is working for pain, nausea and constipation. (I just made an appointment with the radiation oncologist at the University for Tuesday at 3:30, so hopefully everything will mesh so that we can spend a day or two at home and then head to Denver with a good plan working for pain control.)
They are going to set Marshall up shortly with a pump so that he can control when he gets the pain meds (thank you, Debra, for that suggestion). Not sure yet what the pain medication is going to be, but we hope it's Dilaudid. They will monitor his usage over a 24-hour period and then set up a medication plan based on his own usage that we can take home with us. They are also going to start a new nausea medication and they will get his bowels cleaned out and start us on a maintenance plan for that.
They said his CT scan did not show anything that we didn't already know except for the extensive constipation that showed up. As Dr. Kamell put it, we can't deal with the bottom end until we get the top end cleared out.
They are going to stop the pyridium (that caused the scary red urine) and they are going to do more blood work today.
So that's where we stand as of noon today.
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