Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Another Post from Karin :)
It's Karin posting again. :) I've been doing a lot of snoozing all afternoon and evening. I always feel like I was asleep for a long time, but apparently the longest has usually been about an hour. For some reason, people really enjoy coming in to interrupt me. ;) ha.
This afternoon, they added 2 pain patches to my back in an initial attempt of switching pain meds. But at this point, they haven't taken anything else away yet. I still have the IV, where I can give myself a dose of narcotics every 8 minutes by a button -- and I still have the epidural, which is continually giving me a dose, plus I can give myself some extra through a 2nd button every 20 minutes. So the goal is to head towards just the pain patches and oral pain meds. The pain patch must really be helping, because I have not been in pain when I've been waking up today! Normally after snoozing for a bit (and thus not having pressed a button in awhile), I'm really in pain. But I hope that the pain patches are effective enough to truly REPLACE the other things I have (of course, pills are going to be added back too).
I was amazed at what I was able to eat tonight! And I even topped off my pizza crust and yogurt dinner with chocolate ice cream!! Woo hoo!!!! :)
A few stories of special blessings got bypassed yesterday, so I'm backtracking a bit. I wanted to mention that doctors and nurses have both been mentioning since Saturday that I look really good for someone who just had major surgery. So praise God for that!!! :) I'm still not sure when I'll be going home. Before surgery, the doctor had said 4-5 days in the hospital (that would have been Tues or Wed). But on Friday, apparently he told Steve and my dad that I might be able to go home Tuesday, since everything went so well. However, a date has never been mentioned again....and on Monday night here at 9:45pm, I don't feel ready to go home!! I have only been out of bed twice, and both times were a major ordeal. Plus I didn't even really walk much either time. It was just a quick trip from bed to chair and back again later. But my movement did definitely improve today and the return to the bed was better than when I had gotten out this morning. I had thought that I'd attempt this again today, but I've just been so tired that I've been sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. And of course, I've got a variety of tubes in my body, which would need to not be there in order to go home. ;)
My surgeon (urologist) has come daily for a brief visit to follow up on my progress. And today, my oncologist came as well. Apparently my urologist wanted her to come to be involved in deciding on the pain med switches. It has consistently been made clear to me that my combo of the epidural, plus the other IV meds is unusual. But I need the epidural for the surgery, then I need the other for the cancer-related pains. Steve has learned to be very on top of the epidural bag progress, as it's something very particular and take the pharmacy 1.5 hours to prepare. So after running out 2 times this weekend, Steve learned to predict when we have a couple hours left and to ask the nurse to go ahead and order a new one. As I've told Steve so many times over the recent weeks, he is my hero!!!!! :)
But on top of these 2 doctors visiting related to my care, I had a very sweet unexpected visit yesterday from my general physician!! I had seen her on the day we found out the bad news. After the orthopedist called me that morning, he sent us to talk to my physician for her to share the information (beyond the basic which he apologized for needing to share via the phone). So anyway, she came to check on me in the hospital! We had a very nice visit. She told me that her whole office has been concerned about me. And after mentioning God, she told me that they are praying for me and that she has wanted to add me to her church's prayer chain, but she couldn't due to privacy laws. So I gave her permission for people to pray for me. ;) She emphasized how much her staff was thinking of me and wanting to help. In fact, they want to bring meals and one person in particular wants to provide childcare for us!! Wow! I felt so blessed by her visit and by all that she told me in regards to the prayers and offers for help from her office!!
This afternoon, they added 2 pain patches to my back in an initial attempt of switching pain meds. But at this point, they haven't taken anything else away yet. I still have the IV, where I can give myself a dose of narcotics every 8 minutes by a button -- and I still have the epidural, which is continually giving me a dose, plus I can give myself some extra through a 2nd button every 20 minutes. So the goal is to head towards just the pain patches and oral pain meds. The pain patch must really be helping, because I have not been in pain when I've been waking up today! Normally after snoozing for a bit (and thus not having pressed a button in awhile), I'm really in pain. But I hope that the pain patches are effective enough to truly REPLACE the other things I have (of course, pills are going to be added back too).
I was amazed at what I was able to eat tonight! And I even topped off my pizza crust and yogurt dinner with chocolate ice cream!! Woo hoo!!!! :)
A few stories of special blessings got bypassed yesterday, so I'm backtracking a bit. I wanted to mention that doctors and nurses have both been mentioning since Saturday that I look really good for someone who just had major surgery. So praise God for that!!! :) I'm still not sure when I'll be going home. Before surgery, the doctor had said 4-5 days in the hospital (that would have been Tues or Wed). But on Friday, apparently he told Steve and my dad that I might be able to go home Tuesday, since everything went so well. However, a date has never been mentioned again....and on Monday night here at 9:45pm, I don't feel ready to go home!! I have only been out of bed twice, and both times were a major ordeal. Plus I didn't even really walk much either time. It was just a quick trip from bed to chair and back again later. But my movement did definitely improve today and the return to the bed was better than when I had gotten out this morning. I had thought that I'd attempt this again today, but I've just been so tired that I've been sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. And of course, I've got a variety of tubes in my body, which would need to not be there in order to go home. ;)
My surgeon (urologist) has come daily for a brief visit to follow up on my progress. And today, my oncologist came as well. Apparently my urologist wanted her to come to be involved in deciding on the pain med switches. It has consistently been made clear to me that my combo of the epidural, plus the other IV meds is unusual. But I need the epidural for the surgery, then I need the other for the cancer-related pains. Steve has learned to be very on top of the epidural bag progress, as it's something very particular and take the pharmacy 1.5 hours to prepare. So after running out 2 times this weekend, Steve learned to predict when we have a couple hours left and to ask the nurse to go ahead and order a new one. As I've told Steve so many times over the recent weeks, he is my hero!!!!! :)
But on top of these 2 doctors visiting related to my care, I had a very sweet unexpected visit yesterday from my general physician!! I had seen her on the day we found out the bad news. After the orthopedist called me that morning, he sent us to talk to my physician for her to share the information (beyond the basic which he apologized for needing to share via the phone). So anyway, she came to check on me in the hospital! We had a very nice visit. She told me that her whole office has been concerned about me. And after mentioning God, she told me that they are praying for me and that she has wanted to add me to her church's prayer chain, but she couldn't due to privacy laws. So I gave her permission for people to pray for me. ;) She emphasized how much her staff was thinking of me and wanting to help. In fact, they want to bring meals and one person in particular wants to provide childcare for us!! Wow! I felt so blessed by her visit and by all that she told me in regards to the prayers and offers for help from her office!!
Kids Coming
Grandma is coming to visit with the kids, and she's bringing me leftovers for dinner.
Grandpa flew home this morning (after bringing me starbucks), and got his luggage lost on the way way.
Karin ate well at dinner - 4 oz yogurt, pizza crust, fruit. And she's contemplating the cookie bouquet that Noelle sent :-)
Grandpa flew home this morning (after bringing me starbucks), and got his luggage lost on the way way.
Karin ate well at dinner - 4 oz yogurt, pizza crust, fruit. And she's contemplating the cookie bouquet that Noelle sent :-)
Pizza Crust
Karin didn't really manage to fully wake up when dinner arrived. She just woke up enough now to sit up and eat. This is her first meal with real solids. Right now she is eating a thick pizza crust - she 'ordered' cheese pizza, but felt most like eating the crust so far - so I cut of most off the crust from the huge slice they brought .. and she just finished it !! :-) VERY good to see her eating - her body is ready and she needs to rebuild some strength.
Sleep
As we'd been warned, sleeping in a hospital is sometimes difficult. Several times today when Karin got tired and tried to sleep, it was right at that time that we had a flow of nurses and doctors checking on status and such. At one point, she had just got into a good sleep when a nurse came in to do a blood test (this has happened several times actually), and today it was especially painful (I'll spare the details for the squeamish, including Karin who will read this before long I'm sure).
She's finally had a peaceful period of sleep now for about 1 hour. She got really cold an hour ago, I pray she is feeling better when she wakes up.
She's finally had a peaceful period of sleep now for about 1 hour. She got really cold an hour ago, I pray she is feeling better when she wakes up.
Cracker
Karin ate 1 saltine cracker just now. Her first solid food in 3.5 days. She's scared about how her system will react.
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