Posts by Karen Brown

Angela Wright said:Karen Brown, I am honestly revolted by the fact that you and your family are debating the merits of an autopsy for someone who is still very much alive!😲
I just can't wrap my head around this argument about doing it for the sake of your children knowing what happened—this supposed "humane" angle—when you've already essentially laid a living person out on an autopsy table. Right now, he needs your love and your undivided attention; if he is indeed in a terminal phase and there’s nothing more to be done medically, your job is to make his final days easier. This isn't the time or the way to handle this, and frankly, reading about it here—in a place where people come looking for hope and are fighting for every single precious second of life—is just gut-wrenching. There.

Your father is incredibly ill with multiple serious diagnoses, each one potentially contributing to what is happening to him right now. Even a single malignant diagnosis means a cellular-level disruption throughout the entire body, not to mention that his current state could be a side effect of the treatments themselves. In that sense, your dad isn't some complex medical puzzle for Dr. House to solve like you're portraying him; he is a seriously ill man dealing with a mountain of diagnoses and symptoms. Trying to pin down one single "true" cause is like trying to find one specific drop of water in the ocean—whether it's a matter of life or death, it's nearly impossible.

I completely understand why everyone reacted the way they did.
My apologies for any comments that came across as distasteful!
I was speaking specifically about my father, who is still fighting despite everything that lies ahead.
EVERY SINGLE DAY, HIS MOTHER VISITS FOR THE HALF HOUR THEY ALLOW HER!
Personally, I've been there many times myself, and we've had wonderful talks, just encouraging him and staying strong together.

With my previous questions, I was just trying to figure out what went wrong because I have this nagging doubt that something happened that shouldn't have. He went in for a standard adrenal gland surgery; prior to that, he was perfectly healthy, regardless of his past medical history.
I'm grasping at any bit of information I can find regarding the case because I'm a complete layman when it comes to medicine. By profession, I'm a technician, so I naturally want to understand the "why" and the "how"—I just want an explanation.
Once again, my apologies to everyone.

Best regards, and thank you for all your help.

vividsailor7 said:As the test results show, there is ongoing bleeding and anemia, though the coagulation levels look normal.
So, the next step is to continue with hematological therapy, or perhaps undergo surgery to control the bleeding.
PS. Diagnosis breakdown:
Cardia insufficiency, GERD, Hiatus hernia, chronic gastritis—basically, the entrance to the stomach isn't working right, which caused a hiatus hernia, leading to reflux (where stomach acid and bile back up into the esophagus) and chronic inflammation of the stomach lining.
C92.1—Chronic myeloid leukemia in remission.
C74.1—Adrenal gland tumor.
T81.0—Post-operative bleeding from the left kidney, extending into the retroperitoneum (the space behind the abdominal cavity).
D62—Anemia following blood loss.
If anything else is unclear or if you need more info, please feel free to ask.

Thanks for breaking that down,
Things are just getting harder by the day. I found out today that they’ve identified some kind of new illness that nobody seems to fully understand yet. Apparently, this condition developed following the surgery to remove his kidney.
He’s fighting hard and staying sharp for now, but the illness is taking its toll every single day.
Once I get all the medical paperwork in hand, I’ll post a link so you guys can take a look. Maybe we can save someone's life or at least offer some help.
I talked to my mom about requesting an autopsy, but she won't even hear of it. She says he went through so much already and she doesn't want anyone else to have to suffer or learn lessons from his pain. Personally, I really want the autopsy done so we can know exactly what this disease is.

Regardless of what the family wants, will the hospital still perform an autopsy if they suspect it's something entirely new?
Where would I even go to find out?
I’m mostly thinking about my own children; I want us to know exactly what he was battling.
I'm feeling pretty lost right now—am I thinking about this the right way?

Best to everyone,

vividsailor7 said:Honestly, I don't know the doctor's name, but from what I can gather, it looks like he's dealing with some blood clotting issues.
To offer any real insight, I'd need to see actual diagnoses and lab results.

Hi everyone,
I finally managed to get some of the test results back today, along with the discharge papers, so I was wondering if someone might be willing to help me make sense of them all.
Everything is uploaded at this link—I really hope it works and that the quality is clear enough to read, since I had to spend all day begging them to fax everything over before I could go through the hassle of converting it all into a JPEG.

http://www.mypicx.com/11112011/TATA_DOKUMENTI/

Thanks so much in advance for the help.

Hi there,
Thanks to vividsailor7 for the guidance! I’m going to try my best to track down all the pathology reports as soon as they come in—hopefully, I'll have some news tomorrow.
Just to give you a heads-up, it took about 18 full days for the results from the first surgery to actually arrive, and as for the second one—the most recent one—they don't even have those results yet, or at least nothing had shown up by this past Monday. I'll double-check everything and let you know. My first priority is to hunt down the discharge papers.

For context, the first surgery was performed by Dr. Shoapy, while the second one was handled by Associate Dr. Dimanovski; both procedures took place over at Mercy Hospital in NYC.

Thanks everyone, I'll check back in with you all very soon!

Hi everyone,

I’m new to this forum, and I find myself in what feels like a hopeless situation with my father—at least, that’s how it looks to me right now. I’ll try to explain everything.

My dad is currently in intensive care at Mercy Hospital. He originally came in just for surgery to remove an adrenal tumor that had progressed quite a bit; they managed to get it out about two months ago. It was a massive struggle during the procedure because the tumor was engorged with blood and was roughly the size of a human head.
Everything seemed to go fine initially—at least, that’s what we were told—but about 15 days after he was discharged, things took a turn for the worse. He started vomiting uncontrollably and couldn't keep any food down, so he had to be rushed back to the hospital for emergency surgery to clean up the surrounding area.
Following that surgery, they transferred him to the Hematology department at the Mayo Clinic, where he had to have a drain inserted due to significant bleeding.

I should mention that my father has been on GLIVEC therapy because he was treated for a rare type of leukemia about seven years ago.

While he was at the Mayo Clinic, he was receiving plenty of vitamins and twice-daily plasma transfusions. He actually started showing signs of recovery; he was walking around, and my mom was visiting him every single day.

Things stayed steady like that for a while, until something suddenly went wrong with the kidney where the gland had been removed.
He had to be rushed back to Mercy Hospital for an emergency nephrectomy to remove the kidney. We were really hoping that would finally be the end of all these struggles.

After the surgery, which the doctors say went as well as could be expected, there was quite a bit of bleeding, so they had to set up a drain along with extra packing...
On top of that, he's been on constant IV fluids. After nearly two months of this, he’s had about 40 infusions, and now he has pulmonary edema. They’ve had to put a drain in his lung—or something like that—because they had to pull two liters of fluid out of there.
Right now, it seems like none of the doctors are willing to take any decisive action because they're afraid; they're just feeding him through a tube and waiting for something to happen.
From what I can gather, his body just isn't fighting back, likely because his blood is being constantly flushed out.
His urine output is great.
But he's bleeding constantly...
I just can't wrap my head around why this is happening; every doctor we talk to says they've never seen anything quite like this case.

Lately, the whole family has just been sitting here waiting for some kind of improvement, but nothing is happening.
The hardest part is that he is fully conscious and we can still talk to him. His heart is strong, and mentally, he’s doing pretty well—he’s a fighter!

Is there any hope left? And if anyone has dealt with a similar situation, please reach out. Every minute counts right now.

I haven't mentioned any specific doctors' names, but if anyone needs them, I can provide the ones I know.