We are thrilled that we have made it to this point, but also understand what still lays in front of us. We are happy, but we are cautious and tired. Things are beginning to hurt, sting, be sore, and hair is (just slightly so far) beginning to fall out. Tempers are shorter. We are still in good spirits, but are more subdued and are giving ourselves more breaks. Just sitting around not saying anything is o.k. Quiet time is richer and more precious than ever. . . and that's probably why its taken me awhile to sit down and make this entry.
Andrew is good. All of you who know him, know that his is strong in body and character --and that is serving him well. Every time we go to radiation we meet this couple from Watertown, who travels all the way here for therapy. The Mr. has a tumor on his calf the size of a baseball that he is grappling with. He always says to Andrew, "How do you do it? How do you have so much energy!" He does seem some days to be the most lively patient in the room.
While he was in the hospital for four days, he still had to go down to the basement for radiation every day. The first day he insisted that he would walk and not go in a wheelchair. All the nurses were flummoxed. "Do we let him walk?" They decided as a group it would be o.k. but that someone had to walk with him just in case. This was the first time any of their patients had done that. He walked every day to radiation. During his first chemo visit he had surgery to get his port and feeding tube installed so he couldn't walk, but I know that from now on being able to walk to radiation while he's in the hospital will be a marker of sorts. . .
Both the radiation and oncology crew are charmed by his accent (of course)so that is in part why he gets away with such things. The radiation crew decided that they wanted Andrew to teach them "English." He quickly obliged by spending part of the day writing a list of English expressions, with their translations, and their phonetic pronunciation. You can hear the strains of " and Bob's your uncle" and "Is thou fettling well" now wafting across the Radiation Therapy floor. . .
Making comparisions is hard not to do. Comparing Andrew with other patients we see. Comparing me with other support people I see. Comparing one day with another. Comparing one hospital stay with another.
This second hospital stay was very different in many ways. First he did not have surgery which really knocked him out the first time and put him bed and in hospital gowns for most of the stay. This time he was determined to wear his own clothes and every day he had his jeans and t-shirt on. (T-shirt slightly modified to fit the tubes going to the chemo port that is in his shoulder). This time he was more determined to get out and about and I would find him sitting on the window sill in the corridor and not always in his room.
Food and food smells went down well at first, but at the end the hospital food grew to be abhorrent and I was bringing him things from the cafeteria and home to entice him.
The changes in his reactions to sound and light were perhaps the most dramatic. He has insisted on each hospital stay that we bring a table lamp from home. "Hospital lighting is awful" he complained when he first found you he'd have to go in. The warm subdued light from that lamp by his bed was about all he could handle by day four. Same for sound. The noise of the nurses and shoes in the hallway became unbearable and he asked me not to text message him because he found the ping of his phone grating. Rustling of newspapers, volume on t.v., furniture leg screeches, the repetitive drip of the I.V. machine --- all almost too much to bear by day four. Rapid movement on movies became too much to watch and caused headaches. The slow motion of black and white movies on AMC became the standard T.V. fare and then nothing at all --- eyes closed, no moving, going into the zone of just passing time.
The incessant drip of the I.V marked the time like the tick of a clock. On Saturday, Day 3, Andrew figured out that the drip was going to slow to let him get out of the hospital by Sunday night. He asked the nurses to see about speeding it up, and they obliged him. By the evening of Day 3 he was up to speed and on schedule for an evening departure. By 6 p.m. Sunday he was counting the milliliters left in the bag and computing the time in minutes until it would be done. His Ukranian nurse, Nada (who speaks five languages) kept coming in to check and and took his impatience and grumpiness in stride. She did everything she could to facilitate him walking out the door as fast as he could, and when the drip finally died she had him ready to go in ten minutes.
We jumped in the car, and I felt like I was breaking someone out of jail. There was a shared feeling of elation of leaving the hospital in the rear view mirror. When we arrived home, I had the fire set in the fireplace, Fox soccer channel tuned in and the home made beef stew he requested all ready for him. The dogs were excited to see him, but calmed down quickly as if they new he couldn't take much more than that. We all settled down to our usual places, and fell into a comfortable silence (without the staccato ping, ping, ping of little drops) and the lovely everydayness of being home. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment