And then...

Jerry reporting
Just when we thought things were going well, a bump. Lucie started having stomach pains around midnight Monday. By 2am the pains were so intense we packed up and headed for the emergency dept. of Cheshire Medical Center (if you have to have a medical emergency, 2am is a good time, since there is little or no traffic). Fortunately the roads were clear, a plus after the major ice storm of the previous days.

The time between our arrival and a plan of action was a seemingly endless sequence of tests and waiting. The E.R. was quite busy, for a Monday night, apparently due to victims of fires and a car wreck (we only heard snatches of conversation, in the general din of nurses scurrying to and fro. Anyway, a CT scan confirmed what the investigating MD suspected from Lucie's symptoms: a perforated ulcer, which was likely leaking gastric contents into the abdominal cavity. He said we might treat it with antibiotics, to stanch any possible infection, hoping the ulcer would heal on its own, or get more aggressive and go in surgically to see what could be done. We opted for the latter.

I left just before she was to be wheeled into the O.R. around 9:30am. The surgeon called me at home around noon to say the operation was a qualified success. They had patched the hole with tissue taken from somewhere else. Lucie would spend the night in the ICU for monitoring, which would continue for the coming days, to see if the leak from the ulcer had been truly fixed.

I visited her again in the afternoon and she was coherent, intermittently, still coming out of the fog of sedation. It snowed during the night and continues this morning, but I aim to go in to the hospital anyway and will report again when I know more. Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement through a difficult time of our lives.