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August 8, 2006
Friends,
Thanks to all for the kind
words. I am at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, by the way. We
are still working out the technical details of getting internet
connectivity here at the hospital, so there is quite a lag
between me sending an email and getting responses and replying.
As we get the internet infrastructure set up that we need, I will
be able to do more, faster. The last two days have been at once
very busy and very boring. Monday I was not allowed to eat or
drink anything, and I was in Intensive care. The nurses had been
real nice and had been slipping me a few ice chips occasionally.
One of them gave me some lemon flavored swabs that immediately
set off a session of dry heaves. Not much fun when you have
abdominal pain. I convinced the Doc there that he should let me
have ice chips and I eventually prevailed. He let me have as much
as I wanted. That helped out a lot. By the end of the day, I was
being transferred back to the bone marrow transplant unit (BMTU),
where sleeping is much easier. I was still not allowed to get out
of bed. Shortly after arriving in the BMTU they removed the Foley
catheter, which is used to collect urine. I could then walk to
the bathroom as long as a nurse was present.
I slept pretty good last night. This morning my next goal was
getting my freedom to walk around on my own. They quickly started
letting me get up by myself, because I had demonstrated that I
could easily do that a couple of times. Just before lunch I got a
Bone Marrow Biopsy. It wasn't too painful this time. Might be
the morphine they gave me. Shortly after that, before lunch, they
put me on the "BRAT" diet. That stands for Banana,
Rice, Applesauce and Toast. Pretty exciting, but better than
nothing! They didn't give me banana for lunch, so I guess it
was a RAT diet. I could only stomach the applesauce. For dinner
they gave me babyfood bananas. I hope none of you mothers out
there with infants stay away from that. It doesn't taste very
good. I put some applesauce on the rice and sugared it and that
made the rice edible. Other than that, we have been busy setting
up disability, and putting our work affairs in order, with pretty
good success.
Visiting. I can take visitors just about any time, say 8 am to 8
pm. Nobody is allowed on the floor if they have as much as a hint
of a sore throat or cold. I cannot have any fresh fruit or
flowers in my room. If you want to visit, I recommend that you
call the hospital first and ask for BMTU, then ask for me. If I
am not having any procedures, I would probably be fine with
visitors. Just keep in mind that as Chemo progresses, I will be
getting progressively weaker. I am pretty weak right now, but
expect to get stronger as my infection related side effects
continue to heal. The point is, I may not be able to spend a
whole lot of time with visitors due to fatigue.
On the medical front, they figured out that I had an e-coli
infection in my blood and possibly in my colon, so they quit
giving me broad spectrum antibiotics. We need to wait for the
results of the bone marrow biopsy before we can determine the
actual course of treatment. That will take a couple of days. I
will probably start chemo some time Friday.
That's about it for now.
Ted
tw@wilcoxent.com
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