The “C” Word – Day 86 What will the week bring?

Five weeks post-surgery now.  Still clearly not out of the woods.  George is still having trouble with his breathing which makes everything else he needs to do difficult at best.

Tomorrow I will take him for a chest x-ray.  Although I am not sure why as this will only tell if he has pneumonia I think.  In the hospital we had the x-ray to rule out fluid in the lungs and then he had to have a CT scan to verify he had fluid around the lungs… I sure hope we don’t have to do both of those this week!  I do believe we will need another thoracentesis procedure (the same thing we had done the day we finally left the hospital).  It is an outpatient procedure.  He would feel some immediate relief in the lungs but then feels where they push the needle through his back.  If we have to do this again I hope we can get it done soon and then hope that it does not continue because this is agonizing for both of us.  I think if we could fix this once and for all we would see much greater progress for George.

This was a relatively quiet weekend (well, the house has been quiet for weeks now).  George was feeling a bit depressed yesterday, having a woe-is-me kind of day.  I told him that was perfectly fine because I certainly have had my share of them.  He says that even though to us it does not look like he is trying to make forward movement that he is trying – but mentally or physically he is just not able to do much.  He also knows how much of my time this whole ordeal is taking and how much I have given up in order to help him make it through this far.  He feels badly that I have to change the dressings on the newest wounds and help him do basic daily living skills sometimes.  We sat together last night and as I massaged his hands (which are a LOT smaller than they used to be) I couldn’t help but note how fragile and frail he is right now.  It is quite scary.

Steph came by for a visit yesterday.  It was a tearful reunion for him because when he went in for surgery he did not know if he would come out.  He does not remember her being in the ICU unit several days after surgery so this is the first time he has actually seen her.  He had asked her to give him a mani-pedi as he sorely needed his nails clipped.  She readily agreed and did this while I ran out to do some shopping. 

We talk (a lot) about getting calories in.  While the doctor suggested he eat five to six times a day (and try to eat some protein bars which give a lot of bang for the buck), George is having problems with this idea.  Doctor said to eat something every two hours.  Of course, there is push back in regards to this.  After one day he already claims he is tired of the bars (he had only one on Friday and a half on Saturday).  I told him that we are running out of options for getting nutrition into him and if we can’t somehow get his stomach to accept a little more food that our next option is an IV… and I REALLY do not want to go there.   That was one of the things we discussed on Friday – that nutrition or lack thereof is a vicious cycle.  He needs food to get energy but he is lacking the energy to eat.  It takes a conscious effort to break that cycle.  He did pretty well today as every two hours I reminded him he had to eat something.  He did not take in a lot of calories today but he did eat a little something.  He discovered that he can actually taste regular Lays potato chips and enjoyed eating them.  If only his sense of taste would come back he might find trying to eat more satisfying. 

I do not know what he will do while I am at work this week.  I will write reminders as I have been doing – but whether or not he actually reads AND follows them is out of my control.  While I know I have to “let it go” it is difficult for me.  I want so badly for him to gain some control of life.

While this week I know that I have at LEAST two places to take him (x-ray and oncology), I also have some things for me to do.  I will attend my first caregiver support group on Wednesday evening and get a nice one hour massage on Friday afternoon.  Of course, all of this is provided there are no other hiccups in the agenda – and as I said, there will probably be at least one other and that would be the thoracentesis. 

I also plan on getting back to my exercise activities starting with my 6AM half hour “sunrise pilates” classes twice this week and hopefully will try to get back to the gym one morning either this week or next.  The toll on me physically is beginning to show as I haven’t been able to get any activity in myself – and my eating habits have been horrible since I spend so much time appeasing George by driving around to various fast food places as he tries to find things that he would like to try to eat. 

So this is guaranteed to be quite a full week between work, appointments for George and activities for me.