My Sister Cindy’s Hiatal Hernia
My sister, Cindy, went to the emergency room on Friday, October 31, 2013. She was having difficulty breathing, couldn’t walk well, and was retaining fluids. Her whole body was very swollen. They admitted her that night. and determined that she was in heart and renal failure. The right side of her heart wasn’t strong enough pump blood to her kidneys. Her kidneys weren’t working. That caused the fluid buildup. They tried giving her diuretics, but that didn’t do anything.
Early Saturday morning Cindy went into respiratory failure. That means that not enough oxygen was able to pass from her lungs to her blood nor could her lungs couldn’t properly remove carbon dioxide. She had a tube inserted into her trachea to help her breathe. She was also sedated with Propofol (the Michael Jackson recreational drug of choice).
One of the complications that Cindy faced was an inverted stomach lodged under her right breast (it should be on the left side below the rib cage) and a hiatal hernia at the bottom of her esophagus.
The Blogging Caregiver is the daily journal I wrote online, documenting being one of Cindy’s caregivers for the year that followed that first Emergency Room visit on Halloween, 2013 while working full time and also caring for my chronically ill partner and two special needs children.