Coming home soon, I think...

As I suspected, Dave's release date has been pushed back again. It sounds like he should be released by Friday. This time, I have a feeling he really will be released, although the thought has occurred to me that maybe they just like him and don't want to let him go. Actually, there are a couple nurses that are driving him batty. He has taken to actively mocking them as soon as they turn their backs. I'm hoping he gets released before they catch him making fun of them or I shiver to think what they might do to him.

To my trained and familiar eye, Dave has seemed more himself (he's getting his "Dave-ness" back) in the last two days than anytime since his surgery. He's still easily fatigued and groggy at times, but he's smiling and showing more emotion than he had been for weeks.

He had a CT scan yesterday to check the fluid they are draining (the dreaded back drain). The doctors report that everything looks good and there was no sign of infection in the fluid. When he comes home, he'll still be on IV antibiotics for two weeks to make sure the staph infection is completely cleared up. He's off the IV feeding and back on tube feeding (another step in the right direction), and he's back on the full liquid/soft food diet. He actually got to eat scrambled eggs this morning (the first "solid" food in about 3 weeks).

It sounds like the oncologist is going to give him a few more weeks of recovery before starting the next round of chemo the day after Easter or thereabouts.

All in all it feels like we're heading in the right direction.

Now I just can't help closing with one of the lighter moments from my day. For tonight's bedtime story Ian read The Ugly Duckling to Miles and me. At the end, they were both expressing how they felt sad that the other ducks were so mean to the ugly duckling. Ian said, "If I met that duck, I'd tell him he was beautiful, not ugly." Miles, not one to mince words, said, "I'd say, 'You're ugly. Want to be my friend anyway?'" And on that note, goodnight.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

There's not much new to say. Overall, it's been a pretty uneventful couple of days (no complaints here). Dave is still pretty miserable with the new drain they put in his back. They put him back on the morphine, but fortunately it was just for one day and he mainly seemed tired and groggy and not as loopy as before.

Finally, after a couple days of complaining about the discomfort, they put an extension on the drain to get some of the bulk of it around to his side rather than pinned underneath him.

He has graduated from clear liquids to the full liquid diet, so he can now have small amounts of cream soups, milkshakes, yogurt, etc. He has to take it slowly to make sure he doesn't have any nausea and that he doesn't start accumulating more fluid in his abdomen. (And, while I'm thinking about it, thank you Paul for every one of your posts. It's really reassuring to me - and others have mentioned it as well - to know you've been through this and that none of these complications are uncommon when recovering from this surgery.)

Dave's doctor said he might be coming home on Tuesday. A piece of me wonders if they are just trying to let him down gently by pushing his release back a day or two at a time rather than saying it will be another week or so. At this point, I guess it will really depend on how he tolerates the full liquid diet and when they can pull the drain out of his back.

It didn't feel like St. Patrick's Day without Dave at home. For as long as I've known him, we've celebrated St. Paddy's Day (usually with my parents) with a traditional Irish dinner of corned beef, cabbage, and grossly overcooked vegetables. I always get out my bent spoon and pour a couple Black & Tans. Tonight, a really great friend came over and cooked me a fantastic dinner, but I couldn't help thinking about Dave and wondering if his dinner consisted of green Jello. As we sat down to dinner, Elise and I put our mugs of Guinness together in a toast to Dave getting home and getting healthy.

More and more and more fluid

Just when I think Dave is getting the upper hand on this thing, something else comes along. He had another CT scan yesterday to check on the pocket of fluid they've been draining all week. The doctors were pleased with those results, but then found a disparate pocket of fluid somewhere towards his lower back. He spent the afternoon with the intervention radiologist so they could put in yet another drain. Unfortunately, this drain exits out his back - not very comfortable when you spend the majority of your days and nights on your back.

The doctor hasn't said if this will push back the Monday release we were hoping for, but if his stay is being extended it's probably good they haven't mentioned it given his mental and emotional state the past few days. I know he feels like the four walls of his room are closing in on him. I want to steal him away and head for the sand and salt water.

Oh, and a few people have asked how the inimitable Miss Molly McGeoy is doing with her broken arm. Let's just say she's discovered a quick and effective way to make her brothers squeal. Her cast doubles as a mighty effective club, particularly when used on unsuspecting brothers' heads.

I just went down the hall to check on Ian because I could hear him whistling (he whistles exactly like Dave) in his room a full hour and a half after he went to bed. He was musing about how cards people send that say, "Get Well Soon" seem kind of rude and demanding because they don't include "please" or "thank you".

When I see Dave in the morning, I'll let him know how many people are hoping for him to please get well soon (and thanks).

Home Soon

It sounds like Dave's release date (maybe that's not the right word, somehow "release" sounds like he's getting out of prison; of course, I think that's probably how he has started to feel about his latest stay) could be Monday. Dave was quite disappointed to hear he'd be spending another weekend in isolation (another prison term?), but I really think they are trying to be absolutely sure they won't be seeing him there again after they cut him loose this time. He said he's counting down the seconds until Monday. Sure enough, when I walked in his room this morning he appeared to be staring at the clock.

He seems to be feeling a lot better and is certainly looking much better, which I think makes it that much harder to be stuck there for close to another week. Now that he is better able to stay awake for longer stretches of time, I've started bringing him a new movie to watch each day. Today I brought the movie "Amelie". He was watching it when the kids called with their goodnights. Does anyone have any good (preferably uplifting) movie recommendations?

I brought Molly to see Dave yesterday. She asks about him constantly. Almost every morning she gets dressed, including getting her shoes and jacket on (amazing how much better the two-year old is at getting dressed than her older brothers), and then says, "Molly ready go see Daddy at hopala now." Most days I can appease her by putting a full-screen picture of Dave on the computer. Yesterday, she was really happy to see him in person and gave him lots of hugs and kisses. I know it did them both a ton of good.

I brought Ian by this afternoon and he gave Dave a nice laser-pointer demonstration on partial and total eclipses. Tonight all three kids were lamenting how they miss their dad (and it wasn't even after I yelled at them or anything - really!). I actually think the times they miss him the most are when we are having nice family time - having dinner, playing a game, or something like that.

That's about it. For those of you who tell me it makes you sad to read the blog, take heart. Things are ok. We are ok. Dave is going to be ok.

Success!

Day by day, I think things are starting to look up. Dave has seemed a little stronger and little more engaged each of the last few days. I've been trying to spend some time at the hospital each morning since that seems to be his best time. He's usually up for getting out of bed and taking a walk around the ward (2 or 3 laps), and then he can stay sitting up in a chair long enough to beat me at a game of cribbage (he's been getting insanely good hands, and for once I don't mind losing - too much).

The lytic they've been pushing into his drainage tube in an attempt to break through membranes and drain some of the fluid that has been pooled in his abdomen was a success. On Friday afternoon, they pushed 50 cc's of lytic and two hours later retrieved 250 cc's (they cap the drain and give it a couple hours to do its thing). Yesterday, they pushed another 50 and got close to 200 back. When I left the hospital this evening, they IR doctor was pushing another 50 and said there's just a small pocket of fluid remaining which they hoped to drain tonight. Finally - something that feels like a success!

We still haven't heard anything about a possible release date, but I'm hoping it will be sometime this week.

Friday

Things are still moving slowly along. I got to the hospital early this morning since that seems to be Dave's most awake and alert time (it's certainly not mine). While I was there he got his second JP drain removed (this was the last of the two drains placed during surgery on the 12th). I guess that's progress. He still has the drain that was inserted when he was re-admitted last Friday, although the volume from that drain has dropped off as well. As of this morning, the doctors were still trying to figure out what to do with the septated (separated by membranes) pocket of fluid that still remains. This afternoon they decided to push some concoction (can't remember the name of the drug, so concoction is the best I can do) into the drain in an attempt to break up the membranes and drain some of the fluid. The risk of that approach is that the fluid they push in may not come back out and he then has a larger pocket of fluid. In addition, the pressure from the fluid is what caused him so much pain in the first place, so there was some concern over whether that might happen again.

Dave's mom left town this evening, so I didn't make it back to the hospital tonight, but I talked to him on the phone a little bit ago and it sounded like pretty good news so far. He said there has been some fluid draining, so hopefully the new approach is going to break through some walls tonight.

In the meantime, there hasn't been any talk of when he might get discharged. The big challenge now is to keep his spirits up while he's stuck in the hospital. Speaking of which, he can have visitors even though he's in what they consider "isolation". The hospital isn't concerned about the staph being contagious to visitors - the concern is about contagion to other post-op patients with compromised immune systems so they don't want it carried from one patient's room to the common areas of the hospital. Before entering his room, visitors need to put on a gown and gloves and put any personal items in a hospital bag (or leave them outside the room). Dave can also leave his room to take short walks around the ward, but when he leaves the room he needs to put on a fresh gown and gloves, while visitors need to take their gown and gloves off and leave them inside his room. So all you local people who have asked about visiting, please give me a call (cel phone is 206.841.2240) and I'll let you know if he's up for a visitor.

I swear in the few weeks Dave's been out of commission, things are falling apart at our house. The pocket door in our bathroom completely dropped off the track, the bottom of one of Miles' dresser drawers broke and fell through, the hot water heater might be on the fritz. Nothing too major, but it reminds me of all the little things Dave usually just takes care of. It reminded me of when I was about 7 months pregnant with Ian and I asked Dave to hang some shelves in our walk-in closet. In the spirit of trying to make me feel empowered (or at least that's what he'd have me believe), he told me to do it myself. He brought me his drill, 4-foot level, tape measure, apron (which barely fit around my gargantuan mid-section), and a few other supplies, and then I think he went on to do something more important like drink a beer and watch baseball (although I'm sure he'd beg to differ). Anyway, I thought, "Fine, I'll show him..." and got to work hanging my precious shelves. I think I got one shelf hung and then was semi-balancing on a chair, holding the second shelf, while trying to drill a hole, when the whole thing came crashing down and landed on my head. A short battle ensued between my stoic Irish upbringing and my pregnancy-induced hormones, and I started crying like a baby. (I like to pretend I'm Italian now anyway - proudly wearing my emotions on my sleeve.)

When Dave heard the crash and came in to find me crying in a heap on the floor, he felt really awful, but he had this epiphany that it wasn't about hanging the shelves - it was that I wanted him to be my big strong man. So here I sit and wait for my big strong man to get home and get well.

More hallucinations, more fluid

I think I have writer's block tonight. I have about a thousand thoughts running through my head and I'm having trouble putting any of them into words. Here goes nothing... It was really hard seeing Dave yesterday (emotionally one of my worst days). It reminded me a lot of his first days in the ICU. He was not very lucid and for the first time he looked very small and very frail in the hospital bed. He's still having vivid sleep deprivation and drug-induced dreams and then has trouble separating his dreams from reality. He's had a couple different dreams where bad things are happening to the kids and then he's relieved when I assure him that the kids are accounted for and are ok. I usually feel very strong, but I couldn't stop crying when I walked out of his room yesterday.

Quite frankly, I just couldn't face going to the hospital first thing this morning, so I ran some errands and spent a bit of time at the library. I also bought an electric razor for Dave since the hair on his face was starting to outgrow the hair on his head. Thankfully, he was more tuned in to reality when I was there today. I brought some cards people had sent over the past couple days and he was happy to have me read those to him. I'll continue to bring him copies of the posts people leave on the blog as he always likes to hear those as well.

I had a long conversation with the surgeon this evening. The drain they inserted on Friday night seems to have done its job and the drainage has really slowed down. However (and this is a big however), there's another fairly sizable pocket of fluid which has accumulated in his abdomen and which is not being relieved by the new drain. They sent him back down to the intervention radiologist to insert yet another drain to get rid of that fluid. Unfortunately, they were not able to get at the bulk of the fluid. The way the surgeon described it to ye ol' layperson after I gave him the "huh, what does that mean?" was to liken the fluid pocket to the segments of a grapefruit. They could perforate one segment and drain it, but the other segments contain discreet pockets of fluid and it's just not practical (not to mention that it was painful for Dave) for them to drain each one individually. The options now are to either wait and see if his body will reabsorb the fluid over time or go back in to his abdomen surgically and drain the whole area. At this point, because his white blood cel count has dropped and his fever is down, leaving them less concerned about possible infection in that fluid, they are taking the conservative "wait and see" approach.

We embarked on this whole adventure with an admittedly aggressive surgeon to aggressively kick the ass of an aggressive cancer, but at this point I'm feeling pretty good with conservative.