Y-90 Radioembolization

It's Wednesday, March 15th and the procedure is over! It went well and the doctor was able to get the radioactive beads into the places he wanted to in about 1/3rd of his liver.  Now we wait to see how Craig's liver responds and if the tumors stop producing too much insulin.  They had to give him extra glucose again during the procedure. Last night in the night he required extra glucose too.  I think his anxiety about today added to his problems.  Last night, Maddie, Chase and I sat with him and tried to keep things calm as he was worrying about doing it and saying he wasn't sure he wanted to.  We watched "St.Vincent" the movie which was very good and provided a nice distraction.  The nurse and aide took good care of him in the night and we went home to sleep for a few hours.

We got here this morning about 7:30 am and they were ready to take him to radiology.  We followed him as they wheeled his bed through the maze to the U of U hospital.  It takes about 15 minutes to get there from Huntsman. We wished him well and they took him into the radiology suite.

We saw him after the procedure and he was not a happy camper.  The urinary catheter they had placed had leaked and he was sitting in pee.  He had to stay flat for a few hours after so we could do nothing to help him.  They scanned him to look at the beads and finally brought him to the room where his back was in pain again from laying flat.  The nurse worked hard to get the pain meds in him but he was very unhappy and using words I won't repeat here. He told me "never again" would he do this!  The pain meds kicked in and after about half an hour he was ready to get up and go to the bathroom and clean up.  We got him back in a clean bed and he fell asleep and is still pretty sleepy a few hours later. His blood sugar dropped below 60 again and they had to give him more 50% dextrose to get it up.  He's not eating anything much and is supposed to be on a clear diet although he enjoyed a few bites of an oatmeal cookie from Cowboy Grub!  I just ordered him some beef broth and hopefully he'll wake up enough to slurp some down.  Not too worried about the blood sugar right now as we have spiked it to 172 between glucose and prednisone!  They upped the drip on the glucose from 60ccs per hour to 75ccs. Chase helped him with the beef broth and a roll we snuck in and Maddie and I ate lunch on the patio.  Lovely day here in SLC!