10:00pm Tuesday Night

It has been a long day. Hoping for a calm night. Steve's surgery only lasted about 30 minutes. He was in recovery for over an hour. Finally got to his room at noon. Then the excitement started.

A small incision was made in the neck above the collar bone and a permicatheder was threaded through a large vein with the exit point about 6 inches down on his chest with 2 tubes hanging out. Everything went find until he got to his room. I noticed he had a small blood spot on his gown. A few minutes later the blood spot was about the size of the plate. I got the nurse immediately. The exit point was bleeding more than it should. 2 nurses applied pressure for a while but they still could not get it to stop bleeding. He had a slow leak. Finally the nurses call the surgeon. He was already in another surgery so they call his nurse. She came immediately and was with us most of the afternoon trying to get this to stop bleeding. Around 3:30 it finally stop bleeding. The surgeon came anyway and did a couple of things to the permicatheder and we didn't have anymore problems.

They took him about 4:00pm to dialysis. His first treatment was 3 hours. He did pretty well. He hasn't been that comfortable due the pain in his chest and neck. He thinks this is worse than actually having the kidney taken out. The pain meds are not as good as the morphine he had last year. We will see what the night brings. Sleep I hope. Will try and post more tomorrow.

Christy