Home and a new skill set

Sandy broke out of the hospital Friday afternoon. She might have been a tiny bit ready to go home...! Because the blood culture results indicated that the bug she's fighting only responds to IV antibiotics, she had the pleasure of learning how to give herself the antibiotic through her port tubing. She'll continue to do that once a day for awhile. Since her drain tubing and port tubing look identical, she is working on a patent for color coded tubing. Just kidding. But someone ought to!

She doesn't feel 100% yet, but so much better than last Monday. She's taking it slowly with food, on account of that bad tempered pancreas of hers. In time, that should improve as well. On Tuesday she returns to the Cancer Center for routine blood work.

Her next TX trip is coming up mid June. Please pray for excellent news, calm hearts, and good health between now and then.

Happy Memorial Day!

She looks so good! And then she didn't....

At church on Sunday, numerous people told Sandy how great she looked - her countenance was good, her skin tone looked healthy, her eyes had that pain-free spark again. Her hair has really grown thicker the past few months, and she has not been itchy for quite some time. The only not-quite-right thing she had been noticing was a feeling in her abdomen that can mean the drain is on its way to needing to be replaced. However, she had decided it would just be fine until her next TX trip, since the last drain, which has been pain free and leak free, was put in during her last TX trip.

You know how Kansas weather changes on a dime? How it can be 85 and sunny one day and then 24 hours later it's snowing? Sandy is clearly a Kansas girl through and through.

Sandy woke up Monday morning with intense pain and pressure. By now in her journey, she recognizes which type of pain and pressure means a bad stent and which one means a bad drain. This time it was the drain. Her doctors scheduled a drain replacement at St. Francis at 1:30 Monday afternoon. First, though, she went to the Cancer Center for lab work, since her counts were too low last Thursday, which meant she'd had an extra medicine over the weekend to increase the counts...a medicine that makes her feel lousy. By the time she arrived at the Cancer Center, her fever was rising, she was freezing cold, and it was becoming more difficult to think clearly. The nurse at the Cancer Center has seen Sandy like this several times before, and knew what it meant - call in the PA, maybe the Dr., and look at a possible hospital admission, hoping to stay a step or two ahead of sepsis. 

Sure enough, after talking to the PA and the Dr., Sandy was wheeled over to St Francis. Her outpatient drain replacement became an inpatient drain replacement plus whatever was needed. Thankfully, they kept supplying her with warm towels, she didn't have to wait TOO long to be taken to a room, and biggest of all, the nurse was able to find a vein to draw blood for additional labs on the first stick - that's almost unheard of for Sandy.  

After the drain replacement, Sandy felt much better, though not great. Labs showed that her pancreas is kind of angry, which is not unusual for this type of procedure. She is still at St Francis, on a delicious clear liquids diet, hoping to be dismissed Thursday afternoon. She's on summer break, after all, and has better things to do than sit in a hospital bed! 

This is a great reminder to be thankful for each good thing each day, not because we're afraid it won't last, but because each day truly is a blessing, and we're only cheating ourselves if we don't fully appreciate them all.