Hello everybody. Apologies for the long silence; I've been busy, mostly doing biohazard abatement of all shapes and sizes.
Scott is doing well, really well. His abdominal wound has healed, pretty much completely. At first it was the size of a grapefruit, then the size of half a McDonald's apple pie, then half the size of a Snickers bar, then half the size of a HotWheels car, and finally it would just take the tip of somebody's thumb (not that I was poking it or anything). It's finally calmed down to just another wicked-looking scar on his abdomen, a bit off-color with grey and pink and some weird scar tissue. But it's quiet enough that he can use the sauna at the gym without any weird gestures.
What this means for you: call away! Call him! Take him to lunch! Invite him for beers! Go with him to that horridly violent movie in which a thousand warriors kill a thousand more quickly and the king escapes but not for long! It's time! It's time to play!
He is feeling better than he has in a long time. Part of it is getting over the septic shock - that tends to put a damper on feel-good vibes. Part of it is having been off of the chemo for such a long time. It's been eight months (August) since he's been on the oxaliplain, which is the super-powerful stuff which gives him mouth sores, neuropathy in the hands and feet, extreme fatigue, sensitivity to food spices, sensitivity to hot and cold, and chemo brain. It's been four months (December) since he's been on any form of any chemo - the Avastin gave him bloody noses, and the 5-FU gave smaller versions of mouth sores. And it's been March (a month and a half) since he's beein the ICU with most of his major bodily functions hooked up to some faithful machine.
We're enjoying this period of time. We're not exactly going on Mexican cruises, climbing Kilimanjaro, or even frequenting nudist colonies, but we are eating medium-spicy Indian food with wild abandon. Scott went as a chaperone on a field trip for Elli's kindergarten (thereby cementing his place as The Cool Parent) and took her to the Hannah Montana movie (what's a stronger substance than cement? Polyurethane? He polyurethaned his position as the Fun One when he bought her the adult-sized popcorn and let her dance in the aisles during the songs of the movie.) During both of these interludes, Mama (evidently the Uncool Parent) was, alas, at work.
Scott's got another visit with the oncologist coming up in a little while. Last visit was in March, and she basically said his first order of business was to heal that wound up, and then she'd talk more chemo. So I would expect that our next visit, for April/May, will be to show her he's healed that wound up, and then she may talk more chemo.
Everybody always asks me, why more chemo? There are a few catch-all answers to this one.
1. Because the oncologist says so. This is both my first answer and the answer of last resort.
2. To keep the cancer at bay. He's NED, which stands for "No Evidence of Disease." The scanners are pretty good - they can see cancer globules the size of a pea, or even smaller. But cells are pretty gosh darned small, and even a few hundred cancer cells could glom together. They would be too small to be picked up by a scanner, but might not stay that way for long. (That's the problem with cancer cells - a few hundred today, a few thousand next week, and before long you're talking about real-sized tumors. If they weren't so prone to grow, they wouldn't be cancer cells, and they wouldn't be such a problem. They need their discipline to keep from overgrowing their boundaries.) So the chemo is seen as a preventive, a "mopping up" to keep any rogue colonies of cells from growing into rogue nations of tumor.
3. Because the oncologist says so. (This logic is akin to those signs that say "Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, see Rule #1." Substitute oncologist for customer and you've got Scott's approach to this at the moment.)
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And now, for the rest of our story.
Actually, there's not a huge one. Part of the reason for my extended silence on this blog is that a week and a half after Scott came home from the ICU, I came down with the flu. Influenza A, to be exact.
I was, as usual, super responsible when I did it. I taught my last Saturday class, went to Target and filled up on toilet paper and other necessities, came home, paid our babysitter, put the kids to bed, and then said, "Hmmm....I think I have a sore throat." By the next morning, I had completely lost my voice and would have to whisper for the rest of the week.
Three days later I had not really gotten out of bed. I had filed my final grades for my class (over the Internet!). I had consumed about six gallons of ice cream. I had been to the doctor, had a blood test (to rule out weird infections that one occassionally picks up visiting the ICU), a chest X-ray (to rule out pneumonia) and had a nasal swab (which ruled in Influenza A).
I got to spend spring break in bed, sick with the flu. The first four days were pretty horrid. But the last three --- ahhh, who needs a Mexican cruise when one can lie in bed, eating ice cream and drinking coffee, with the kids safely at school (I was too sick to care for them) and the husband safely out in the garage (he really shouldn't have been around me at all)? I watched all sorts of back episodes of Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey, and "The Real Housewives of New York City." It was wonderful. I hadn't realized how fried I had gotten, between Scott's first surgery, the first recovery, his septic shock, the ICU stay, the hospital stay, and his recovery from that too.
There was some collateral damage, mostly on the psyches of the kids. Make that kid. Maggie's pretty steady, and was fairly philosophical about it. She's also 3, with a shorter time horizon and a briefer span of attention. Elli's our canary in the coal mine, and she did NOT like what she saw. First Daddy sick. Then Daddy home and looking unwell. Then Daddy back in the hospital and too sick for kids to visit. Then Daddy home with a huge weeping abdominal wound and a lap she couldn't sit on. Then Mommy coughing, unable to speak, lying in bed, and a weird combination of Daddy and babysitters taking her to school. She's 5, and part of her was probably thinking, "Surely if this continues any longer, all the grownups around here will be incapacitated and I'll be left to walk the dog and wash the dishes!"
She did what any self-respecting spirited five year old would do. She threw a few temper fits. She screamed a bit. She shook her finger at me and told me to get out of bed. She even tried to get me up by prying my eyes open with her fingers (thumb over my nose for greater effect). None of that worked.
So she staged the Great Poop-A-Thon of 2009. She began to poop her pants. It started with a few fudgie stripes here and there. Then it moved into wet farts. Then (when I was too sick in bed with the flu to care if she had dropped an elephant in her pants) the Full Monty. Make that Monties. Before I knew it, I was packing two and three changes of underwear to school with her and they were coming home in plastic bag after plastic bag.
I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it required Mommy being well for two full weeks (and proving it by leaving work early to get Elli out of school early, spending special Mommy time with just Elli while Maggie napped) before the Fudgies receded.
I haven't tallied up the final damages just yet, but we're almost out of Clorox bleach and I shall be shopping heavily at Sears when next they have a Disney Princess Underwear sale. And at some point this year I hope I shall be replacing our living room carpet.
(This actually does make me feel somewhat better. Daddy may be the Super Cool One Who Goes to Movies, and his illness was enough to start the 2009 incarnation of the Fudgie Train, but it appears it would be me, and only me, who had the power to halt the Fudgies in their tracks. This may actually be a notch in my Housewife's Apprentice belt (or apron?) -- don't those happy housewives on TV always pride themselves on clean laundry? And what requires greater skill - laundering a delicately crumpled white linen napkin from an outdoor picnic, or doing a months' worth of biohazard removal of (high fiber)(organic) kiddie poo from pair after pair of Ariel the Little Mermaid underwear? I didn't have the heart to tell Ariel that industrial sludge dumping had come to her pristine piece of territory.)
But we are back in usual form again. I back at work (gloriously behind once again), the kids are back to school (and we are even getting there on time), and Scott is feeling much much better.
I may even attempt to be social again. Right after, of course, I bake organic whole-wheat bread rolls, hand-baste lace onto my kitchen curtains, mount a "Mozard Mustard" blackout shade in the living room, plan a lecture on predictive analytics, go to Pilates class, find Elli some summer pajamas, clean up a little vomit from Maggie, coax my darling baby dog continue her "senior dog" diet doggie food, catch the sparrow which has somehow flown into our kitchen (messing up my lace-bottomed curtains!), and plant the tomato plants Scott brought home.
Actually, monkeys will fly out of you-know-where before all that happens. I'm going to actually try to see what remains of my own social life before that entire list happens.
Who knew? After nearly three months of biohazard, Mama is back in the game again. Pour the coffee - let springtime begin!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Home again, home again!
Hi all - I'm delighted to tell you Scott was discharged yesterday from Kaiser and he's at home now.
The wound vaccuum got to stay at the hospital, but he's still got quite the open wound on his abdomen. It used to be the size of a grapefruit; now it's down to the size of a golf ball. It's open but now mostly red and pink, with few or none of the green, purple, and yellow colors we saw in the hospital.
With the help of his heavy oral antibiotics, it is healing, slowly but surely.
He is changing his bandages at home (I didn't know Band-Aids CAME in the Jumbo size, but evidently they do!) and trying to avoid straining or further aggravating this, at least until it heals a little more.
He's pretty tired - is sleeping much of the afternoons and going to bed about 7 pm. He got up for breakfast with the kids this morning and went right back to bed after breakfast. I took the kids into the bedroom to say bye bye to Daddy before taking them to school.
What this means for you: there are some of you who are desperate to see him, take him to lunch, talk to him on the phone, and the works.
Hold that thought. Hold on tight, because next week he's going to be desperate to get out of the house and see you, go to lunch, talk on the phone, go to the movies, the whole works.
But I might suggest it would be wise to let him rest through this weekend. Let him lie low, drink his fluids, take his antibiotics, take his naps, and generally cope with the bundles of energy which are the delighted kids.
Email him or message him on Facebook if you must, but please hold the phone calls, visits and playdates until next week.
It appears that the way we got into this situation was doing too much, too soon after the colostomy closure surgery, and the only thing worse than doing that once is doing it twice.
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I am delighted to report I have perfected the art of being late.
Neophytes (this used to be me) are never late at all: they are the sorts of people who consult calendars, factor delays into travel time, arrive early, and instill the value of punctuality in their children.
Junior apprentices (this also used to be me) are late, sometimes by as much as an hour, but never without stress. They know they are late. They call to apologize for being late. They feel their blood pressure rise when delayed by traffic, the missing pink Hello Kitty sock, the gallon of ice cream left on the counter last night. They may even try to adjust their behavior (by, say, getting up fifteen minutes earlier) so they won't be late tomorrow.
But, as with so many things from playing the violin to making a souffle, perfection has quite a different veneer than these clumsy beginning attempts. I now get the kids to school two minutes late without breaking a sweat, and certainly without speeding, hurrying them out of the car, or sprinting up the stairs. We find the Hello Kitty sock; we clean up the ice cream; we even take the time to do Elli's hair in two pom-poms and affix the crown to Maggie's dolly's hair, and all of this with nary a thought of getting up earlier tomorrow and with never a wayward glance at the clock.
I am often two to three hours late to work, because I now walk the dog (or do a hospital pick-up, or attend Pilates class) after dropping the kids off and before opening my office door. I don't wear a watch. I return business calls within the week; I return personal emails within the month. (My taxes, however, will be paid on time, largely because they are the provice of our accountant. She's not as accomplished in late-ism as I am; evidently the IRS takes a dimmer view of tardies than I currently do. My hair is entirely another story, because the last time I had it cut was, I think, for my sister's wedding about six months ago...)
I will let you know if it is possible to go beyond perfection in this matter.
Stephen Hawking would think so. I read his "A Brief History of Time" book. There are the usual four dimensions of length, width, height, and time. I was delighted to learn in this book that they think there may be as many as ten or even twenty-four dimensions. Moreover, they think some of these may be very small, or curled up like the inside of a drinking straw. This is excellent news all around, because it now means
1) I am for sure not late, because the smarty-smarts like Hawking and Einstein say everything's relative; I'm simply travelling much slower than the speed of light and just a tad slower than you all
2) My keys are for sure not lost. They just keep slipping off into the seventeenth dimension and are probably at this minute curled up inside a drinking straw somewhere off of the planet Jupiter. They periodically make their appearances in my kitchen, in Einsteinian time, occasionally near the speed of light, but never quite fast enough to get the kids to school on time. We are simply asymptotically approaching the 8 am school bell, but like the heroines of Greek mythology, may be doomed to never quite make it.
The wound vaccuum got to stay at the hospital, but he's still got quite the open wound on his abdomen. It used to be the size of a grapefruit; now it's down to the size of a golf ball. It's open but now mostly red and pink, with few or none of the green, purple, and yellow colors we saw in the hospital.
With the help of his heavy oral antibiotics, it is healing, slowly but surely.
He is changing his bandages at home (I didn't know Band-Aids CAME in the Jumbo size, but evidently they do!) and trying to avoid straining or further aggravating this, at least until it heals a little more.
He's pretty tired - is sleeping much of the afternoons and going to bed about 7 pm. He got up for breakfast with the kids this morning and went right back to bed after breakfast. I took the kids into the bedroom to say bye bye to Daddy before taking them to school.
What this means for you: there are some of you who are desperate to see him, take him to lunch, talk to him on the phone, and the works.
Hold that thought. Hold on tight, because next week he's going to be desperate to get out of the house and see you, go to lunch, talk on the phone, go to the movies, the whole works.
But I might suggest it would be wise to let him rest through this weekend. Let him lie low, drink his fluids, take his antibiotics, take his naps, and generally cope with the bundles of energy which are the delighted kids.
Email him or message him on Facebook if you must, but please hold the phone calls, visits and playdates until next week.
It appears that the way we got into this situation was doing too much, too soon after the colostomy closure surgery, and the only thing worse than doing that once is doing it twice.
***********************************************************
I am delighted to report I have perfected the art of being late.
Neophytes (this used to be me) are never late at all: they are the sorts of people who consult calendars, factor delays into travel time, arrive early, and instill the value of punctuality in their children.
Junior apprentices (this also used to be me) are late, sometimes by as much as an hour, but never without stress. They know they are late. They call to apologize for being late. They feel their blood pressure rise when delayed by traffic, the missing pink Hello Kitty sock, the gallon of ice cream left on the counter last night. They may even try to adjust their behavior (by, say, getting up fifteen minutes earlier) so they won't be late tomorrow.
But, as with so many things from playing the violin to making a souffle, perfection has quite a different veneer than these clumsy beginning attempts. I now get the kids to school two minutes late without breaking a sweat, and certainly without speeding, hurrying them out of the car, or sprinting up the stairs. We find the Hello Kitty sock; we clean up the ice cream; we even take the time to do Elli's hair in two pom-poms and affix the crown to Maggie's dolly's hair, and all of this with nary a thought of getting up earlier tomorrow and with never a wayward glance at the clock.
I am often two to three hours late to work, because I now walk the dog (or do a hospital pick-up, or attend Pilates class) after dropping the kids off and before opening my office door. I don't wear a watch. I return business calls within the week; I return personal emails within the month. (My taxes, however, will be paid on time, largely because they are the provice of our accountant. She's not as accomplished in late-ism as I am; evidently the IRS takes a dimmer view of tardies than I currently do. My hair is entirely another story, because the last time I had it cut was, I think, for my sister's wedding about six months ago...)
I will let you know if it is possible to go beyond perfection in this matter.
Stephen Hawking would think so. I read his "A Brief History of Time" book. There are the usual four dimensions of length, width, height, and time. I was delighted to learn in this book that they think there may be as many as ten or even twenty-four dimensions. Moreover, they think some of these may be very small, or curled up like the inside of a drinking straw. This is excellent news all around, because it now means
1) I am for sure not late, because the smarty-smarts like Hawking and Einstein say everything's relative; I'm simply travelling much slower than the speed of light and just a tad slower than you all
2) My keys are for sure not lost. They just keep slipping off into the seventeenth dimension and are probably at this minute curled up inside a drinking straw somewhere off of the planet Jupiter. They periodically make their appearances in my kitchen, in Einsteinian time, occasionally near the speed of light, but never quite fast enough to get the kids to school on time. We are simply asymptotically approaching the 8 am school bell, but like the heroines of Greek mythology, may be doomed to never quite make it.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Maybe, maybe
Hi all! This will be a quickie post.
Scott is, as I write this, still at Kaiser on the third floor, but there's talk he may be coming home today. He's off of all IVs and all catheters, and moved from IV to oral antibiotics yesterday. (He'll need to be on antibiotics for another week or so to ensure the bugs are totally out of his blood).
He's gotten clearance from two doctors (colorectal surgeon and wound specialist) and needs clearance from one more (vascular specialist).
It's also unclear whether the wound vaccuum will be coming home with him, or whether he'll be able to leave his high-tech leech behind and just go to the hospital every day for wound care. At any rate, the wound is healing nicely and looks like it will close completely.
What is clear, though, is that I need to stay on standby for the discharge call. It typically comes between 9:30 and 1:30 pm (uniformly distributed about the advertised 11 am discharge time), and they go from keeping him in the hospital at all costs to being ready to boot (wheelchair, actually) him out the door pronto. I have learned that for the duration of a possible hospital discharge, I should not do things like shower, make a big Target run, schedule a work conference call (even after 1:30 pm, because Murphy's Law can catch me wherever I go), paint my toenails, or bake anything. I should do things I can drop at a moment's notice, like grade Quiz 4. Last time this went on for several days - I'm hopeful today's "discharge vigil" will be a little shorter-lived.
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And what else is clear is that I am not Fancy. Fancy, as in Fancy Nancy. She's a children's book character, and the Fancy Nancy books were given to Elli and Maggie by my sister's mother-in-law Lydia over Christmas. Fancy Nancy has displaced Hop on Pop and Dora's Great Adventure as our all-time favorite bedtime readings. Maggie of course knows the words by heart now, and gets very upset if I skip even one mention of "parfait" (instead of plain "ice cream") or "Marabelle Lavinia Chandelier" (instead of "Nancy's dolly").
Turns out that in my jeans and ponytail and glasses, I look just like the mom in the book, which is Not Fancy.
And Elli has decided she is, like Nancy, Very Fancy.
While Scott was in the hospital, I took Elli out of school for one afternoon and we did some special Mommy time. A few hours and a few dollars at the Goodwill Store and Michael's crafts, and we are on track to make Elli's room a little bit more Fancy.
There's only one small complication: she shares it with Maggie. Maggie is having a binary relationship with all this finery. On one hand, she adjusts to change slowly, so had a full-scale meltdown when she saw her new room at 5 pm yesterday. On the other, she is still living with her own personal goddess (the big sister) and has a short attention span, so by 10 pm last night she was not only okay with the Fanciness, but was putting on lipstick and sleeping with a heart-shaped pink pillow and some silk orchids.
Next week, we have got to get some Fanciness for Maggie, so it will keep her out of Elli's Fanciness.
Thank goodness the mom in those books is Plain. I just don't have it in me to be so Fancy all the time.
Scott is, as I write this, still at Kaiser on the third floor, but there's talk he may be coming home today. He's off of all IVs and all catheters, and moved from IV to oral antibiotics yesterday. (He'll need to be on antibiotics for another week or so to ensure the bugs are totally out of his blood).
He's gotten clearance from two doctors (colorectal surgeon and wound specialist) and needs clearance from one more (vascular specialist).
It's also unclear whether the wound vaccuum will be coming home with him, or whether he'll be able to leave his high-tech leech behind and just go to the hospital every day for wound care. At any rate, the wound is healing nicely and looks like it will close completely.
What is clear, though, is that I need to stay on standby for the discharge call. It typically comes between 9:30 and 1:30 pm (uniformly distributed about the advertised 11 am discharge time), and they go from keeping him in the hospital at all costs to being ready to boot (wheelchair, actually) him out the door pronto. I have learned that for the duration of a possible hospital discharge, I should not do things like shower, make a big Target run, schedule a work conference call (even after 1:30 pm, because Murphy's Law can catch me wherever I go), paint my toenails, or bake anything. I should do things I can drop at a moment's notice, like grade Quiz 4. Last time this went on for several days - I'm hopeful today's "discharge vigil" will be a little shorter-lived.
*************************************************************************************
And what else is clear is that I am not Fancy. Fancy, as in Fancy Nancy. She's a children's book character, and the Fancy Nancy books were given to Elli and Maggie by my sister's mother-in-law Lydia over Christmas. Fancy Nancy has displaced Hop on Pop and Dora's Great Adventure as our all-time favorite bedtime readings. Maggie of course knows the words by heart now, and gets very upset if I skip even one mention of "parfait" (instead of plain "ice cream") or "Marabelle Lavinia Chandelier" (instead of "Nancy's dolly").
Turns out that in my jeans and ponytail and glasses, I look just like the mom in the book, which is Not Fancy.
And Elli has decided she is, like Nancy, Very Fancy.
While Scott was in the hospital, I took Elli out of school for one afternoon and we did some special Mommy time. A few hours and a few dollars at the Goodwill Store and Michael's crafts, and we are on track to make Elli's room a little bit more Fancy.
There's only one small complication: she shares it with Maggie. Maggie is having a binary relationship with all this finery. On one hand, she adjusts to change slowly, so had a full-scale meltdown when she saw her new room at 5 pm yesterday. On the other, she is still living with her own personal goddess (the big sister) and has a short attention span, so by 10 pm last night she was not only okay with the Fanciness, but was putting on lipstick and sleeping with a heart-shaped pink pillow and some silk orchids.
Next week, we have got to get some Fanciness for Maggie, so it will keep her out of Elli's Fanciness.
Thank goodness the mom in those books is Plain. I just don't have it in me to be so Fancy all the time.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Moving on up to the third floor
Hi all! This will be another brief (but hopefully glorious) post.
Scott was released from the ICU yesterday and has moved up in the world, to the third floor of Kaiser Walnut Creek, in the Med/Surg recovery unit. This is a place where you have to breathe on your own, feed yourself, and it is generally considered good form to know your own name, what day it is, and what's wrong with you.
He's still got the little vaccuum cleaner negative-pressure thing on his colostomy closure wound, and it drains some truly interesting looking stuff. His right arm is back to normal size, but the left arm is still so swollen they are concerned about clots. As a result, the doctor has determined that his port-a-cath must come out. It's currently in, and I'll let you know when the removal surgery is scheduled.
Those of you who are faithful readers may remember the port-a-cath is a quarter-shaped thing implanted under the skin of his left chest; it's the port by which the chemotherapy enters his body. It gives them always an open vein, and so they don't need to worry about veins collapsing or not being able to get a good needle stick.
This raises another point, which is that without the port-a-cath, how will chemotherapy be able to get into him? The brief answer is I don't know. The second answer is it's not really an issue right now, because the clotting problem is a much more immediate threat to his health than any tumor activity. The third answer is that the chemo is really not a problem at all right now, because he was off if it for the surgery and would have gone back on it next week at the very earliest, so he wouldn't be on it now anyways. And the last answer is I'm sure they'll figure out a way, because they always do.
I took the kids to visit him this morning. It was the first time they'd really seen their daddy in 11 days, and he was thrilled to see them. It took me the usual - about two hours - in total. Why so long? It's actually nontrivial to get everybody dressed, in the car, watching their movie, down the freeway, in the parking garage, to the elevator, down the elevator, across the lawn, across the lobby of Kaiser, into the elevator, up three floors, out of the elevator, past the nurses' station, and into Daddy's room, and then all of that in reverse. This two hour chunk of my morning gave us a good but brief visit with Daddy.
We lasted fourteen minutes.
Elli got into bed with him, took off one shoe, took off the other shoe, snuggled up with his right (good) arm, got out of bed, got a rubber glove, asked him to blow it up, put on one shoe, got another glove, tried to pull the bandage off of his neck where the pic IV line used to be, asked him why he had such a beard, wanted his juice box of apple juice, and ran into the hallway, nearly colliding with a nurse pushing something large, fragile, and expensive.
Maggie was fairly calm until the shoe-taking-off business got started; then she got both shoes off and wanted to also remove her panty hose, underpants, and dress. She is more cautious by nature, and was having none of it: wouldn't get in bed with Daddy, wouldn't touch him, wouldn't drink his juice, mess with his IV, or bang his TV remote. (She did, however, manage to poke around near his feet and find the drainage bag for the vaccuum thing on his wound, which is how I know what colors were in that thing. Let's just say I'm glad that sort of biohazard is well sealed off.)
We distracted her with Elli's latex glove. Scott couldn't blow up or tie off the surgical gloves to make balloons like last time, and that's never been one of my strengths. I did manage to get one glove inflated and tied off, and the kids batted that balloon around the room for a while.
Then Maggie began running back and forth, back and forth, through the privacy curtain, pulling a little harder on it each time. When she put her full weight on it and swung like George of the Jungle, I knew it was time to leave before we broke something more expensive than a curtain or a nurse.
So Scott's doing as well as can be expected.
******************************************************************************
There actually is no rest of the story today. My entire life has been consumed with caretaking: my husband, my kids, my students, my clients, my dog, my house, my checking account, even the special form of mold which is growing in my kids' room (and which I eradicated this morning with a shot of vinegar).
I will get more of a life later on, I hope.
Scott was released from the ICU yesterday and has moved up in the world, to the third floor of Kaiser Walnut Creek, in the Med/Surg recovery unit. This is a place where you have to breathe on your own, feed yourself, and it is generally considered good form to know your own name, what day it is, and what's wrong with you.
He's still got the little vaccuum cleaner negative-pressure thing on his colostomy closure wound, and it drains some truly interesting looking stuff. His right arm is back to normal size, but the left arm is still so swollen they are concerned about clots. As a result, the doctor has determined that his port-a-cath must come out. It's currently in, and I'll let you know when the removal surgery is scheduled.
Those of you who are faithful readers may remember the port-a-cath is a quarter-shaped thing implanted under the skin of his left chest; it's the port by which the chemotherapy enters his body. It gives them always an open vein, and so they don't need to worry about veins collapsing or not being able to get a good needle stick.
This raises another point, which is that without the port-a-cath, how will chemotherapy be able to get into him? The brief answer is I don't know. The second answer is it's not really an issue right now, because the clotting problem is a much more immediate threat to his health than any tumor activity. The third answer is that the chemo is really not a problem at all right now, because he was off if it for the surgery and would have gone back on it next week at the very earliest, so he wouldn't be on it now anyways. And the last answer is I'm sure they'll figure out a way, because they always do.
I took the kids to visit him this morning. It was the first time they'd really seen their daddy in 11 days, and he was thrilled to see them. It took me the usual - about two hours - in total. Why so long? It's actually nontrivial to get everybody dressed, in the car, watching their movie, down the freeway, in the parking garage, to the elevator, down the elevator, across the lawn, across the lobby of Kaiser, into the elevator, up three floors, out of the elevator, past the nurses' station, and into Daddy's room, and then all of that in reverse. This two hour chunk of my morning gave us a good but brief visit with Daddy.
We lasted fourteen minutes.
Elli got into bed with him, took off one shoe, took off the other shoe, snuggled up with his right (good) arm, got out of bed, got a rubber glove, asked him to blow it up, put on one shoe, got another glove, tried to pull the bandage off of his neck where the pic IV line used to be, asked him why he had such a beard, wanted his juice box of apple juice, and ran into the hallway, nearly colliding with a nurse pushing something large, fragile, and expensive.
Maggie was fairly calm until the shoe-taking-off business got started; then she got both shoes off and wanted to also remove her panty hose, underpants, and dress. She is more cautious by nature, and was having none of it: wouldn't get in bed with Daddy, wouldn't touch him, wouldn't drink his juice, mess with his IV, or bang his TV remote. (She did, however, manage to poke around near his feet and find the drainage bag for the vaccuum thing on his wound, which is how I know what colors were in that thing. Let's just say I'm glad that sort of biohazard is well sealed off.)
We distracted her with Elli's latex glove. Scott couldn't blow up or tie off the surgical gloves to make balloons like last time, and that's never been one of my strengths. I did manage to get one glove inflated and tied off, and the kids batted that balloon around the room for a while.
Then Maggie began running back and forth, back and forth, through the privacy curtain, pulling a little harder on it each time. When she put her full weight on it and swung like George of the Jungle, I knew it was time to leave before we broke something more expensive than a curtain or a nurse.
So Scott's doing as well as can be expected.
******************************************************************************
There actually is no rest of the story today. My entire life has been consumed with caretaking: my husband, my kids, my students, my clients, my dog, my house, my checking account, even the special form of mold which is growing in my kids' room (and which I eradicated this morning with a shot of vinegar).
I will get more of a life later on, I hope.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Scott update: Friday is Rip Van Winkle Day
Hi all - a quick update on Scott. No news here is good news. He is currently in "fair" condition in the ICU at Kaiser (I'm not exactly sure how this compares to the "fair/good" condition of yesterday, but it's definitely better than the "critical" condition of Sunday night.)
He just ate a large breakfast and is now sleeping (10:07 am). He fell asleep during my visit to him yesterday after 15 minutes, which was wonderful, because 15 minutes was the longest he's been awake to speak with me since this whole thing happened, and the sleep is what he needs right now. (I had a little extra time before I was due home, so I went out and climbed in the back of my minivan in the five-story parking garage and took a 20 minute nap as well. Ahhh, the luxury of a minivan with tinted windows!)
And I have no health updates, because his nurse was momentarily off of the floor. This in and of itself is great news, because those ICU nurses don't step out when a patient's in any sort of trouble.
*********************************************************************************************
Updates on all of the rest of us:
Elli (age 5) is still coughing but at school for half a day today. She was up a lot last night with bad dreams and -- you guessed it -- she wants her mama. That would be me. Oh yes, oh yes, that would most certainly be me.
Maggie (age 3) is wearing her Dora the Explorer nightgown and floral pantyhose to school today. She wore this Monday, too. She has actually worn this every day this week, and I haven't even been able to sneak it out to the laundry to wash. But since she was home Tues, Weds, and Thurs, hopefully her teachers will think I washed it in the meanwhile. She insists she does not smell, as Elli says, like Parmesan cheese but rather, as she says, like gym socks.
Lucky (canine, age 7) in her infinite mercy, spared Battie the stuffed bat this past 24 hours, so Battie remains swaddled, with a binkie, and went to school intact with Elli this morning. (It's Stuffed Animal Day at school, and for once I'm on top of it). While I was in the ICU yesterday, Lucky did get a hold of Squirrelley, our stuffed squirrel, and chewed Squirrelley's right eye off. This was upsetting to the girls, but nowhere near as traumatic as Battie would have been, and several rungs below chewing up Barbie, Snow White, Ariel, or Cinderella dolls. I even walked Lucky this morning, so hopefully some of that pent-up energy has been spent chasing real squirrels (who are considerably more skilled at evasive maneuvers than Squirrelley and Battie are.)
And I remain, as they say, good in a crisis. It's actually fairly easy for me to have Scott in the ICU, once I got past the worry element of it. I'm not having to be hypervigilant at home, waiting for the other shoe to drop - it already fell. And there's absolutely nothing more that I can do for him - he's in the best hands I could put him in and I visit him about as much as he can take - fifteen minutes a day.
The ICU is like Daddy Day Camp, Sleepaway Scouting for Grownups - they bring his meals, do his meds, change his TV channel, and even empty his pee-wee (he's got the Foley catheter in again.)
I've got no special creamy meaty un-spicy dinners to prepare, so the kids are eating ramen noodles and I'm regressing to organic locally grown kale with potatoes and cayenne pepper, and eating my Protest Food (chocolate covered peanuts) in the office as soon as I get in. I have no dishes to do (because Aunt Kay, bless her, is doing them for me!)
I've got no laundry to do. Maggie isn't changing out of her Dora dress, I'm sleeping in my street clothes (by day and by night), Elli wore her pajamas for four days straight, and Lucky the dog remains firmly committed to her nudist lifestyle, so the laundry is actually very manageable.
I've got free rein to feed the kids unorthodox meals at weird hours without offending more mannerly sensibilities, so Maggie had juice and only the raisins from her Raisin Bran (plus two sleeves of Smarties) for breakfast this morning, and Elli refused to eat her cereal so I made her a special bottle of juice and a half sandwich of cream cheese (on organic whole wheat bread which could pass for sandpaper in another zip code) for her to eat on the couch while watching TV. All of these are violations of usual operating procedure, but hey, there ain't nothing usual about my life these days. And I even got them to school on time by 8 am, which was purely an accident, and mostly an artifact of the fact that they get up about 6:15 am, rain or shine, sick or well. If they had slept longer, we most certainly would have been gloriously late and I would have been glad of it.
And now I am in the office. I'm going to try to grade Quiz 3, because I'm teaching tomorrow (Saturday), and they're turning in Quiz 4.
He just ate a large breakfast and is now sleeping (10:07 am). He fell asleep during my visit to him yesterday after 15 minutes, which was wonderful, because 15 minutes was the longest he's been awake to speak with me since this whole thing happened, and the sleep is what he needs right now. (I had a little extra time before I was due home, so I went out and climbed in the back of my minivan in the five-story parking garage and took a 20 minute nap as well. Ahhh, the luxury of a minivan with tinted windows!)
And I have no health updates, because his nurse was momentarily off of the floor. This in and of itself is great news, because those ICU nurses don't step out when a patient's in any sort of trouble.
*********************************************************************************************
Updates on all of the rest of us:
Elli (age 5) is still coughing but at school for half a day today. She was up a lot last night with bad dreams and -- you guessed it -- she wants her mama. That would be me. Oh yes, oh yes, that would most certainly be me.
Maggie (age 3) is wearing her Dora the Explorer nightgown and floral pantyhose to school today. She wore this Monday, too. She has actually worn this every day this week, and I haven't even been able to sneak it out to the laundry to wash. But since she was home Tues, Weds, and Thurs, hopefully her teachers will think I washed it in the meanwhile. She insists she does not smell, as Elli says, like Parmesan cheese but rather, as she says, like gym socks.
Lucky (canine, age 7) in her infinite mercy, spared Battie the stuffed bat this past 24 hours, so Battie remains swaddled, with a binkie, and went to school intact with Elli this morning. (It's Stuffed Animal Day at school, and for once I'm on top of it). While I was in the ICU yesterday, Lucky did get a hold of Squirrelley, our stuffed squirrel, and chewed Squirrelley's right eye off. This was upsetting to the girls, but nowhere near as traumatic as Battie would have been, and several rungs below chewing up Barbie, Snow White, Ariel, or Cinderella dolls. I even walked Lucky this morning, so hopefully some of that pent-up energy has been spent chasing real squirrels (who are considerably more skilled at evasive maneuvers than Squirrelley and Battie are.)
And I remain, as they say, good in a crisis. It's actually fairly easy for me to have Scott in the ICU, once I got past the worry element of it. I'm not having to be hypervigilant at home, waiting for the other shoe to drop - it already fell. And there's absolutely nothing more that I can do for him - he's in the best hands I could put him in and I visit him about as much as he can take - fifteen minutes a day.
The ICU is like Daddy Day Camp, Sleepaway Scouting for Grownups - they bring his meals, do his meds, change his TV channel, and even empty his pee-wee (he's got the Foley catheter in again.)
I've got no special creamy meaty un-spicy dinners to prepare, so the kids are eating ramen noodles and I'm regressing to organic locally grown kale with potatoes and cayenne pepper, and eating my Protest Food (chocolate covered peanuts) in the office as soon as I get in. I have no dishes to do (because Aunt Kay, bless her, is doing them for me!)
I've got no laundry to do. Maggie isn't changing out of her Dora dress, I'm sleeping in my street clothes (by day and by night), Elli wore her pajamas for four days straight, and Lucky the dog remains firmly committed to her nudist lifestyle, so the laundry is actually very manageable.
I've got free rein to feed the kids unorthodox meals at weird hours without offending more mannerly sensibilities, so Maggie had juice and only the raisins from her Raisin Bran (plus two sleeves of Smarties) for breakfast this morning, and Elli refused to eat her cereal so I made her a special bottle of juice and a half sandwich of cream cheese (on organic whole wheat bread which could pass for sandpaper in another zip code) for her to eat on the couch while watching TV. All of these are violations of usual operating procedure, but hey, there ain't nothing usual about my life these days. And I even got them to school on time by 8 am, which was purely an accident, and mostly an artifact of the fact that they get up about 6:15 am, rain or shine, sick or well. If they had slept longer, we most certainly would have been gloriously late and I would have been glad of it.
And now I am in the office. I'm going to try to grade Quiz 3, because I'm teaching tomorrow (Saturday), and they're turning in Quiz 4.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Scott: now in "good" condition in ICU
Hi all -
This will be brief (but glorious).
The Scott update. He's been upgraded from "critical/serious" to "good" condition, but remains in the ICU at Kaiser. Just last night he got to eat the first solid food since Saturday (a few strawberries, some of which I got to feed to him and some of which he fed to himself).
His issues now are the arms. His left arm is quite swollen, and they want to ensure there are no clots in it - you may remember he had a pulmonary embolism in the summer of 2007. If you're not medical, a pulmonary embolism is 1) a bad thing 2) a clot that starts somewhere and 3) ends up in the lungs. They want to ensure there are no repeats of this.
His white blood cell count is down from the 38,000 it was upon entry to something like 26,000 - yours and mine is probably about 12,000 or so. The infection is under control but he remains on antibiotics.
The CAT scan came back that there was no abcess under the abdominal colostomy closure wound, which is very good news. There is no need for surgery there, because there's nothing there to go in and get. They are treating the wound on the surface with what looks like a giant sponge attached to a giant vaccuum. It basically sucks the bad stuff out and encourages the good stuff to grow. He gets this because 1) it's a fancy-dancy super-duper form of a band-aid 2) the wound is too large, wet, and generally infected to put a closed dry bandage on it and 3) the vaccuum means they change the sponge less frequently then they have otherwise been changing the bandages, and that's less painful for Scott.
His "minor" issues include a pain in his right wrist (possibly sprained? broken? who knows?), fluid around his heart (which they're just watching but does not currently seem to be impacting circulation), and a "density" in his right lung (and nobody knows what this is, but since it's not impacting his breathing just now they don't really seem to bother about it much.)
He remains fairly happily morphined up, but recognizes people he knows, knows what day and time it is, and even sat up two different times yesterday.
So while he's still quite sick, he appears to be improving.
************************************************************
And the update on everybody else:
I'm still home with two sick kids, and my tasks this morning include getting a shower (done), calling the ICU for more information (not done yet - they're doing shift change just now and I know their schedule well enough to know I get the best info about 30 minutes after the new shift comes on), and going to the bank (because I'm out of checks in my checkbook and out of cash, and it's bad form to run around with no money these days).
Elli is still coughing heavily but getting better. She felt well enough this morning to eat something (tuna fish; she's a kitten today) and take advantage of Daddy's absence to use his entire roll of precious cellophane tape to make a Charlotte's Web in her bedroom. (The web construction is how I'm getting this written.)
Maggie is getting sick, probably with what Elli had. She didn't eat breakfast this morning, just proclaimed herself to be "Baby Pinkie" this morning and drank a bottle. She is beyond alarmed at the web of cellophane tape in her bedroom and has poked her toe through her pajama footie bottoms, and is desperate for me to sew it up NOW.
Lucky has thoroughly chewed up one large pink My Little Pony, one small purple Baby My Little Pony, one Bratz doll with gloriously long blond hair, and is (unfortunately) stalking Battie. Battie is a stuffed bat from our Halloween stash that the girls got out of the garage yesterday, and Battie has the unfortunate lot of being irresistably cute to my girls and irresistably setting off the prey drive in the dog. Right at the moment Battie is swaddled in a baby blanket, in a basket, with a binkie in its fangs; the little mommies did leave Battie on the floor, however, so Battie's time on this planet is probably limited. Lucky is just waiting until we go to the bank so she can hunt unimpeded.
Scott's Aunt Kay and Uncle David took a plane down from Seattle yesterday, and are staying nearby in a hotel, so alleluia! I've got backup. They are going to visit him in the ICU while I hold the sick kids, and they are going to stay with the sick kids while I go visit him in the ICU.
A few things which are not even making it onto my to-do list:
* brushing kids' teeth
* checking my usual emails
* washing my hair
* sleeping in pajamas (I'm back to sleeping in street clothing to save time)
And the thing which is now at the top of my to-do list:
* investigating the crash from the girls' bedroom. I've been typing entirely too long.
This will be brief (but glorious).
The Scott update. He's been upgraded from "critical/serious" to "good" condition, but remains in the ICU at Kaiser. Just last night he got to eat the first solid food since Saturday (a few strawberries, some of which I got to feed to him and some of which he fed to himself).
His issues now are the arms. His left arm is quite swollen, and they want to ensure there are no clots in it - you may remember he had a pulmonary embolism in the summer of 2007. If you're not medical, a pulmonary embolism is 1) a bad thing 2) a clot that starts somewhere and 3) ends up in the lungs. They want to ensure there are no repeats of this.
His white blood cell count is down from the 38,000 it was upon entry to something like 26,000 - yours and mine is probably about 12,000 or so. The infection is under control but he remains on antibiotics.
The CAT scan came back that there was no abcess under the abdominal colostomy closure wound, which is very good news. There is no need for surgery there, because there's nothing there to go in and get. They are treating the wound on the surface with what looks like a giant sponge attached to a giant vaccuum. It basically sucks the bad stuff out and encourages the good stuff to grow. He gets this because 1) it's a fancy-dancy super-duper form of a band-aid 2) the wound is too large, wet, and generally infected to put a closed dry bandage on it and 3) the vaccuum means they change the sponge less frequently then they have otherwise been changing the bandages, and that's less painful for Scott.
His "minor" issues include a pain in his right wrist (possibly sprained? broken? who knows?), fluid around his heart (which they're just watching but does not currently seem to be impacting circulation), and a "density" in his right lung (and nobody knows what this is, but since it's not impacting his breathing just now they don't really seem to bother about it much.)
He remains fairly happily morphined up, but recognizes people he knows, knows what day and time it is, and even sat up two different times yesterday.
So while he's still quite sick, he appears to be improving.
************************************************************
And the update on everybody else:
I'm still home with two sick kids, and my tasks this morning include getting a shower (done), calling the ICU for more information (not done yet - they're doing shift change just now and I know their schedule well enough to know I get the best info about 30 minutes after the new shift comes on), and going to the bank (because I'm out of checks in my checkbook and out of cash, and it's bad form to run around with no money these days).
Elli is still coughing heavily but getting better. She felt well enough this morning to eat something (tuna fish; she's a kitten today) and take advantage of Daddy's absence to use his entire roll of precious cellophane tape to make a Charlotte's Web in her bedroom. (The web construction is how I'm getting this written.)
Maggie is getting sick, probably with what Elli had. She didn't eat breakfast this morning, just proclaimed herself to be "Baby Pinkie" this morning and drank a bottle. She is beyond alarmed at the web of cellophane tape in her bedroom and has poked her toe through her pajama footie bottoms, and is desperate for me to sew it up NOW.
Lucky has thoroughly chewed up one large pink My Little Pony, one small purple Baby My Little Pony, one Bratz doll with gloriously long blond hair, and is (unfortunately) stalking Battie. Battie is a stuffed bat from our Halloween stash that the girls got out of the garage yesterday, and Battie has the unfortunate lot of being irresistably cute to my girls and irresistably setting off the prey drive in the dog. Right at the moment Battie is swaddled in a baby blanket, in a basket, with a binkie in its fangs; the little mommies did leave Battie on the floor, however, so Battie's time on this planet is probably limited. Lucky is just waiting until we go to the bank so she can hunt unimpeded.
Scott's Aunt Kay and Uncle David took a plane down from Seattle yesterday, and are staying nearby in a hotel, so alleluia! I've got backup. They are going to visit him in the ICU while I hold the sick kids, and they are going to stay with the sick kids while I go visit him in the ICU.
A few things which are not even making it onto my to-do list:
* brushing kids' teeth
* checking my usual emails
* washing my hair
* sleeping in pajamas (I'm back to sleeping in street clothing to save time)
And the thing which is now at the top of my to-do list:
* investigating the crash from the girls' bedroom. I've been typing entirely too long.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Scott update - and Carrie's to do list
Hello all,
First, the Scott update. He remains in the ICU at Kaiser Walnut Creek, but is improving to "critical stable."
He is off of his blood pressure medicines, and his blood pressure has improved enough he can have pain meds.
He's not well enough to undergo surgery just now, but his surgeon, the wonderful Dr. F., thinks he can do some bedside debridement (think of scrubbing grout out of tile, except this time it's dead tissue out of an abdominal wound the size of a softball).
He may be going to have a CAT scan today, if he is well enough for it, so they can try to identify the site of the infection. It appears to be deep in the abdomen. He's got only a mild fever, and they've cultured the bacteria in his blood as Strep-A, so they can give him appropriate antibiotics.
And, thanks to the morphine, he's in no pain. Not only no pain, but a delightfully loopy dreamy happy state.
I am bringing him his cellphone later today. If he happens to call you, please keep in mind he may be deliciously full of opiates, and take whatever he may say accordingly.
*********************************************************
So this morning I was at Kaiser pediatrics, with Elli. You may remember she was really too sick to go to school yesterday but I had our babysitter drop her off anyways and begged school to keep her. Well, today she really wasn't well - fever and coughing - and so we went to pediatrics.
We were in the examination room with the physician. You know, the place where they ask you to turn cell phones off, so you can give the doctor your undivided attention?
Well, as he was listening to her lungs and ordering up a chest X-Ray to see if she had pneumonia, my cellphone rang. It was from the ICU.
This is a time of firsts for me. I have never in my life asked an examining doctor (at a managed care HMO, no less!) to wait while I stepped outside and took a phone call, but I did it today. He knew the background and agreed to wait.
I was prepared for the usual. Perhaps his nurse calling me with a status update. Perhaps his surgeon with a surgery date. Perhaps the surgeon telling me they did emergency surgery just now. It is these sorts of times when you really hope it's not the hospital chaplain or grief counsellor, because under the circumstances I don't want to hear what they might have to say.
And, as usual, it was unusual. It was Scott, who had come out of his morphine haze long enough to dial my phone number, which was written on the whiteboard at the foot of his bed. He was high as a kite and twice as loopy.
Scott: "Hi darling! Where are you?"
Me: "At Kaiser with Elli. She's got a cough and I don't like the sound of it."
Scott: "That's great! Why don't you bring her to visit me?"
Me: "Sweetie, they don't let kids into the ICU."
Scott: "Why not? Well, why don't you come to see me and leave her in the hallway?"
Me: "Actually, darling, can I call you back in a few minutes? The doctor is listening to her chest and we want to rule out pneumonia. He's actually examing her right now, and then we're going to head down to X-Ray."
Scott: "An X-Ray? Why don't they get a CAT scan? That's a real scanner. The X-Ray is for weenies."
Me: "I love you darling. I'm going to hang up now and call you back in a few minutes. Bye."
And so we got the X-Ray order written, signed out of pediatrics, and at the front desk I stopped to call Scott back.
Of course, the phone number he had called from was one of those outgoing-only; to actually talk to an ICU patient you need to pass the nurse switchboard's gatekeepers.
I had left the business card with the ICU phone number at home.
This number is so secret that Kaiser pediatrics didn't have it, and neither did the volunteers at the front gate.
I knew if Elli had pneumonia I shouldn't get her anywhere near the ICU. (At the time, I thought it was so she wouldn't infect the ICU patients; later on Scott's nurse told me it was actually so the ICU patients wouldn't make Elli even sicker...go figure...)
Finally, the pediatrics receptionist saw a look in my face that made her have mercy. She dialed the hospital operator, identified herself as a Kaiser employee, asked to be connected to the ICU, and as it was ringing, passed the handset over to me. I identified myself to his nurse and she forwarded the phone into his room.
I stood behind the pediatrics desk, trying to talk to Scott.
Elli was sucking on her binky, with her teddy bear in her hands, coughing so violently she doubled over at times, and pulling on my leg. (Yes, she is FIVE years old and we recently bought an entire new inventory of binkies and bottles. You know that bit about stress making them regress? Well, Daddy's latest illness has kicked us all the way back to infancy. I'm just glad the ICU can take care of him, because if he were any sicker they'd both want to crawl back into the womb, and I've been there, done that, and that hotel room is CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. So considering the alternatives, a little binky here and a little bottle there doesn't sound so awful.)
Our second conversation was much the same as the first, except he thought 1) Elli had pneumonia and 2) it was no big deal.
I tried really hard to convey the following:
* that I would visit him later today, when Elli was home with our babysitter
* that we wouldn't know if it was pneumonia or not until we got the X-Rays back, and to do that we needed to hang up the phone and get down to the X-Ray clinic, and then return to pediatrics
* that I would bring him his cellphone this afternoon
* the reason I wasn't bringing Elli to visit him right this very minute was that his evil nurse and Elli's wicked doctor both said no children with suspected pneumonia are allowed in the ICU, and
* the follow-up reason I couldn't visit him myself right that moment was that the vile candy stripers won't let me leave her in the hallway unattended
(I am trying to play the angelic faultless wife here, and goodness knows I need all the help I can get with that role - hence wicked everybody and everything else.)
This business about not coming to visit him right now was getting nowhere, so I took a different tack. When in Rome, I guess sometimes you gotta suck it up and speak Italian.
So, I said, "Sweetheart, you're absolutely right. I'm coming now. Right away. Just one little thing has to happen first. You just ring for your nurse and ask for some more morphine, and as soon as she gives you your next dose then they'll let me come visit. I'll be there when you wake up."
I held the line until I heard him ring the nurse bell; then I hung up the receptionist's, and then took Elli down to X-Ray to get her chest checked out.
To make the rest of my morning briefer,
* At first read, Elli doesn't have pneumonia, just a bad cold - alleluia!
* Pediatrician is sending X-Rays to radiology for a second opinion because I told him that I was NOT messing around today, and no disrespect intended, but the only thing worse than one critically ill family member was two critically ill family members, and I was not quite yet in the mood to "watch and wait" and see if this cold develops into something worse. I promised him that sometime next summer, when all is calmer, I will volunteer both girls for a vaccine study or something like that. I also asked him in the meanwhile, to please remember I was pretty laid-back and un-neurotic when kids were newborns, and to please just carry forward some of that good karma to pay any current deficits in my laid-back-ness in this great checkbook of life. (I didn't want to get a black mark next to my name in the pediatrics log, because I want them to continue to take my phone calls.)
* We got home and Elli's down for a nap, so I'm updating you all.
Today's to-do list for me looks like this:
* ICU check - ask if Scott surgery and if so when? DONE
* take a nap (self and Elli; she's sick and I'm too old to be pulling all-nighters anywhere, let alone big exciting ones like Sunday in the ER was) HALF
* call (my sister) Cathy - is she here or in Minneapolis? DONE - she's here
* visit Scott if no surgery - short visit - arrange afternoon sitter - NOT YET DONE
* visit Scott if surgery - long visit - arrange overnight sitter - NOT DOING TODAY
* email check; blog update (this is this; I should note this to do list is not in order of priority or execution.) DONE
* Quiz 3 grade (for my class) NOT YET DONE, probably NOT GOING TO GET DONE
* Cancel class and final exam review (it's tomorrow, but Murphy's Law says I ain't gonna make it and best to let students know now) - GOING TO DO NEXT
* pack spare underwear, pants, and socks for Maggie for school. HALF DONE. I have them in a bag on the front bench but not yet in the car.
* Walk Lucky (our dog has been housebound since Sunday and is now chewing her way through our Barbie collection with all that pent-up wild creature energy. While generally I delight at the demise of any Barbie at any time for any reason, it's not helping the stress level of the kids any to watch their beloved Barbie dolls get stalked, stolen, "killed," and eaten by my beloved baby dog. It does make picking up the dog poop an exercise in multicolor artwork, though - against the brown background canvas I get dainty little pieces of peach plastic, strands of blond hair, and once even a bit of her necklace. I guess domestication has only made moderate progress against her canine instincts.) TO DO when sitter arrives, just before ICU visit.
* make peace with library. I borrowed "My Brother, My Sister," an early reading book for Elli, and it's overdue. I am not going to find it in 2009, so best to pay the fine and move on. NOT DONE.
* ask my mom to call Scott's Aunt Kay and Uncle David in Seattle and let them know what's going on. DONE.
* ask my virtual assistant Barbara if she can make peace with the library for me. DONE. So I can walk into the library with my head held high.
* be alert to calls on my cellphone from the ICU, from pediatrics, and from radiology. NEVERENDING STORY. DONE, DONE, DONE, DONE, and DONE AGAIN, but NEVER FINISHED. At least not for today.
So, my lovelies, I'm off to email my students and take a nap. I've got the phone volume turned up full blast so it will wake me up when the ICU next calls ... so it's times like this I soooo appreciate you all not calling me just to see how I am. Hopefully you know a bit more by now.
I need to sleep when I can.
I have snuck one of Elli's pink plastic "My Little Pony" toys in my back pocket.
I am going to surreptitiously feed it to Lucky in my room at naptime, to 1) keep her busy and 2) keep her from eating another Barbie while Mama sleeps. After all, horsemeat is dogfood, no?
First, the Scott update. He remains in the ICU at Kaiser Walnut Creek, but is improving to "critical stable."
He is off of his blood pressure medicines, and his blood pressure has improved enough he can have pain meds.
He's not well enough to undergo surgery just now, but his surgeon, the wonderful Dr. F., thinks he can do some bedside debridement (think of scrubbing grout out of tile, except this time it's dead tissue out of an abdominal wound the size of a softball).
He may be going to have a CAT scan today, if he is well enough for it, so they can try to identify the site of the infection. It appears to be deep in the abdomen. He's got only a mild fever, and they've cultured the bacteria in his blood as Strep-A, so they can give him appropriate antibiotics.
And, thanks to the morphine, he's in no pain. Not only no pain, but a delightfully loopy dreamy happy state.
I am bringing him his cellphone later today. If he happens to call you, please keep in mind he may be deliciously full of opiates, and take whatever he may say accordingly.
*********************************************************
So this morning I was at Kaiser pediatrics, with Elli. You may remember she was really too sick to go to school yesterday but I had our babysitter drop her off anyways and begged school to keep her. Well, today she really wasn't well - fever and coughing - and so we went to pediatrics.
We were in the examination room with the physician. You know, the place where they ask you to turn cell phones off, so you can give the doctor your undivided attention?
Well, as he was listening to her lungs and ordering up a chest X-Ray to see if she had pneumonia, my cellphone rang. It was from the ICU.
This is a time of firsts for me. I have never in my life asked an examining doctor (at a managed care HMO, no less!) to wait while I stepped outside and took a phone call, but I did it today. He knew the background and agreed to wait.
I was prepared for the usual. Perhaps his nurse calling me with a status update. Perhaps his surgeon with a surgery date. Perhaps the surgeon telling me they did emergency surgery just now. It is these sorts of times when you really hope it's not the hospital chaplain or grief counsellor, because under the circumstances I don't want to hear what they might have to say.
And, as usual, it was unusual. It was Scott, who had come out of his morphine haze long enough to dial my phone number, which was written on the whiteboard at the foot of his bed. He was high as a kite and twice as loopy.
Scott: "Hi darling! Where are you?"
Me: "At Kaiser with Elli. She's got a cough and I don't like the sound of it."
Scott: "That's great! Why don't you bring her to visit me?"
Me: "Sweetie, they don't let kids into the ICU."
Scott: "Why not? Well, why don't you come to see me and leave her in the hallway?"
Me: "Actually, darling, can I call you back in a few minutes? The doctor is listening to her chest and we want to rule out pneumonia. He's actually examing her right now, and then we're going to head down to X-Ray."
Scott: "An X-Ray? Why don't they get a CAT scan? That's a real scanner. The X-Ray is for weenies."
Me: "I love you darling. I'm going to hang up now and call you back in a few minutes. Bye."
And so we got the X-Ray order written, signed out of pediatrics, and at the front desk I stopped to call Scott back.
Of course, the phone number he had called from was one of those outgoing-only; to actually talk to an ICU patient you need to pass the nurse switchboard's gatekeepers.
I had left the business card with the ICU phone number at home.
This number is so secret that Kaiser pediatrics didn't have it, and neither did the volunteers at the front gate.
I knew if Elli had pneumonia I shouldn't get her anywhere near the ICU. (At the time, I thought it was so she wouldn't infect the ICU patients; later on Scott's nurse told me it was actually so the ICU patients wouldn't make Elli even sicker...go figure...)
Finally, the pediatrics receptionist saw a look in my face that made her have mercy. She dialed the hospital operator, identified herself as a Kaiser employee, asked to be connected to the ICU, and as it was ringing, passed the handset over to me. I identified myself to his nurse and she forwarded the phone into his room.
I stood behind the pediatrics desk, trying to talk to Scott.
Elli was sucking on her binky, with her teddy bear in her hands, coughing so violently she doubled over at times, and pulling on my leg. (Yes, she is FIVE years old and we recently bought an entire new inventory of binkies and bottles. You know that bit about stress making them regress? Well, Daddy's latest illness has kicked us all the way back to infancy. I'm just glad the ICU can take care of him, because if he were any sicker they'd both want to crawl back into the womb, and I've been there, done that, and that hotel room is CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. So considering the alternatives, a little binky here and a little bottle there doesn't sound so awful.)
Our second conversation was much the same as the first, except he thought 1) Elli had pneumonia and 2) it was no big deal.
I tried really hard to convey the following:
* that I would visit him later today, when Elli was home with our babysitter
* that we wouldn't know if it was pneumonia or not until we got the X-Rays back, and to do that we needed to hang up the phone and get down to the X-Ray clinic, and then return to pediatrics
* that I would bring him his cellphone this afternoon
* the reason I wasn't bringing Elli to visit him right this very minute was that his evil nurse and Elli's wicked doctor both said no children with suspected pneumonia are allowed in the ICU, and
* the follow-up reason I couldn't visit him myself right that moment was that the vile candy stripers won't let me leave her in the hallway unattended
(I am trying to play the angelic faultless wife here, and goodness knows I need all the help I can get with that role - hence wicked everybody and everything else.)
This business about not coming to visit him right now was getting nowhere, so I took a different tack. When in Rome, I guess sometimes you gotta suck it up and speak Italian.
So, I said, "Sweetheart, you're absolutely right. I'm coming now. Right away. Just one little thing has to happen first. You just ring for your nurse and ask for some more morphine, and as soon as she gives you your next dose then they'll let me come visit. I'll be there when you wake up."
I held the line until I heard him ring the nurse bell; then I hung up the receptionist's, and then took Elli down to X-Ray to get her chest checked out.
To make the rest of my morning briefer,
* At first read, Elli doesn't have pneumonia, just a bad cold - alleluia!
* Pediatrician is sending X-Rays to radiology for a second opinion because I told him that I was NOT messing around today, and no disrespect intended, but the only thing worse than one critically ill family member was two critically ill family members, and I was not quite yet in the mood to "watch and wait" and see if this cold develops into something worse. I promised him that sometime next summer, when all is calmer, I will volunteer both girls for a vaccine study or something like that. I also asked him in the meanwhile, to please remember I was pretty laid-back and un-neurotic when kids were newborns, and to please just carry forward some of that good karma to pay any current deficits in my laid-back-ness in this great checkbook of life. (I didn't want to get a black mark next to my name in the pediatrics log, because I want them to continue to take my phone calls.)
* We got home and Elli's down for a nap, so I'm updating you all.
Today's to-do list for me looks like this:
* ICU check - ask if Scott surgery and if so when? DONE
* take a nap (self and Elli; she's sick and I'm too old to be pulling all-nighters anywhere, let alone big exciting ones like Sunday in the ER was) HALF
* call (my sister) Cathy - is she here or in Minneapolis? DONE - she's here
* visit Scott if no surgery - short visit - arrange afternoon sitter - NOT YET DONE
* visit Scott if surgery - long visit - arrange overnight sitter - NOT DOING TODAY
* email check; blog update (this is this; I should note this to do list is not in order of priority or execution.) DONE
* Quiz 3 grade (for my class) NOT YET DONE, probably NOT GOING TO GET DONE
* Cancel class and final exam review (it's tomorrow, but Murphy's Law says I ain't gonna make it and best to let students know now) - GOING TO DO NEXT
* pack spare underwear, pants, and socks for Maggie for school. HALF DONE. I have them in a bag on the front bench but not yet in the car.
* Walk Lucky (our dog has been housebound since Sunday and is now chewing her way through our Barbie collection with all that pent-up wild creature energy. While generally I delight at the demise of any Barbie at any time for any reason, it's not helping the stress level of the kids any to watch their beloved Barbie dolls get stalked, stolen, "killed," and eaten by my beloved baby dog. It does make picking up the dog poop an exercise in multicolor artwork, though - against the brown background canvas I get dainty little pieces of peach plastic, strands of blond hair, and once even a bit of her necklace. I guess domestication has only made moderate progress against her canine instincts.) TO DO when sitter arrives, just before ICU visit.
* make peace with library. I borrowed "My Brother, My Sister," an early reading book for Elli, and it's overdue. I am not going to find it in 2009, so best to pay the fine and move on. NOT DONE.
* ask my mom to call Scott's Aunt Kay and Uncle David in Seattle and let them know what's going on. DONE.
* ask my virtual assistant Barbara if she can make peace with the library for me. DONE. So I can walk into the library with my head held high.
* be alert to calls on my cellphone from the ICU, from pediatrics, and from radiology. NEVERENDING STORY. DONE, DONE, DONE, DONE, and DONE AGAIN, but NEVER FINISHED. At least not for today.
So, my lovelies, I'm off to email my students and take a nap. I've got the phone volume turned up full blast so it will wake me up when the ICU next calls ... so it's times like this I soooo appreciate you all not calling me just to see how I am. Hopefully you know a bit more by now.
I need to sleep when I can.
I have snuck one of Elli's pink plastic "My Little Pony" toys in my back pocket.
I am going to surreptitiously feed it to Lucky in my room at naptime, to 1) keep her busy and 2) keep her from eating another Barbie while Mama sleeps. After all, horsemeat is dogfood, no?
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