A lot in a week

Nausea has been a huge challenge over this last week. It is the type of thing that you don’t want to write about until you are through it. For a person that is normally healthy and rarely down for more than a day being sick, Michele has had a lot of challenges. Her numbers have been good and at the same time she has been feeling terrible. I think Thursday she slept a total of 20 hours.

Nausea also brings with it the desire to just not eat. Michele loves to eat. This is hard on her and me on several levels. It was quiet around the house. I would check in on her from time to time and she was completely out. I took the time that day to work through boxes of items in my home office. I organized all the paperwork for medical claims and insurance claims into a binder. I even Ironed all the wrinkles out of a green screen I bought. Building a small video/podcast studio from bits and pieces I have collected over the years has been a slow process.

Michele and I talk about how to leverage her good days and one of them is to record training that can help our agents and business. We are still not there yet, but it is coming together. The good days Vs bad days. This is a statistic I don’t want to track. Her good days are great, and her bad days are getting a bit rougher.

Friday – Acute Cancer Care Center visit

The pain was getting too much for her. Sleeping and then when awake just having bad nausea was overwhelming. We put the call into the clinic to talk to the Doctor’s team. After going through the questions, they recommended that she should come into the ER. Or the Acute Cancer Care Center. It is a unique area. It runs like an ER but is exclusively for patients of MD Anderson.

We arrived around 5:00 PM. I dropped her off and then went to park the car. It was a packed afternoon for the ACCC. There were no rooms available when we arrived, so we had to wait in the waiting room. Michele was feeling both anxious and sick. She laid down on the floor for a couple of minutes before one of the nurses offered to put her in the covid isolation area. They had some reclining chairs in there. Thankfully, they did not have any covid cases that day.

Emergency rooms never give you the impression of being in an emergency unless it is truly life threatening. Being sick is awful, but not life threatening. Over the next hour and a half, I gave her ice chips, rubbed her back, and stood by the door waiting for a room to become available. I am sure pre-covid they could flip rooms over quickly. Now a room must be deep cleaned before the next patient can go back.

In the meantime, our little lobby area is filling up with patients. One with suspected pneumonia. Another that was crying about it taking so long. She seemed there alone but had her suitcase ready to stay the night. Another patient came in and could not stop talking about how much pain she was in. I stood guard in our room in such a way that no one wanted to ask why we were in this devoted area. I didn’t want anyone else in there.

Michele has never truly experienced anxiety or depression in her adult life. I most certainly have and could tell that she was slipping into that zone. Fidgety and constantly asking what is taking so long are the clues. Around 6:30 we rolled back to a room. Room 1.

The nurses get to work

Once in the room, the nurses were right on top of things. They immediately took blood, gave her Zolfran for the Nausea and I am sure some sedative. Within 10 minutes she is resting well and sleeping as we wait for the ER Doctor. These doctors are trained to treat the urgent and are also intimately integrated into the Cancer Treatment programs. This reason alone is why we drove 45 minutes versus going to a closer emergency room.

They came back for an ever-popular Urine Sample. At the end of the evening, the doctor was able to note a hint of a UTI and prescribed some antibiotics for that and a patch to help with Nausea. Amazingly we were home around 10:00.

Saturday

Michele still slept a lot on Saturday. She was also able to eat some as well. Sleep is the body’s built-in way to heal. Let the body do what it does. We did make a run to Subway, and she managed to devore a sandwich there. She lay back down when we went to sleep and was out for several more hours.

Saturday night talkathon

As we crawled into bed and she had taken her medicine for the evening, I was hoping for a solid night’s rest. That was not to be the case. I have talked about her hallucinating at the hospital. This night was a truly exceptional night. It was ALL NIGHT! Topics from working her pending business to having family members visiting. I practically had no sleep that night as I tried to answer her questions and make sure she didn’t do anything like try to go upstairs or get in the car in the middle of the night.

To say it was a brutal night would be sugar coating it. But we made it and on into Sunday.

Our son-in-law’s birthday was coming up on Monday. Michele decided Sunday that we needed to take him down to Galveston for lunch. Michele pushes herself. This was one of those days. She wanted to go, and she wanted to walk on the beach. That is what we did!

Loaded into the car prepared to make a beach day if necessary, we made the trek down to Galveston. Having made so many trips between October and January, it was a bit Eerie. We made it past the traffic and down to the Seawall. Destination? Still to be decided.

We have two restaurants we have frequented over the years. Tortugas and The Spot. The Spot won after a little debate. The spot is really 3 places melded into one. As I parked the car, Michele decided she wanted to be upstairs looking out on to the water. The Gulf of Mexico always has wind. It may be slight, but it is never without wind. This day it was windy. We managed to order some appetizers and drinks. Then Michele wanted to move to another less windy area. So, we did that.

Sometimes Appetizers are all that was needed. 😎

Walk on the beach

Michele loves the beach and wants to dip her toes in the water. We jaywalked to the beach and got our feet wet. We walked a quarter of a mile maybe and you could tell she was getting winded (no pun … well ok.. pun intended). It was a successful day!

The water in Galveston is always brown and always warm. It is not dirty really. It just has a mud bottom near the shore. It is always fun to watch the birds walking on the beach and people watch. This day delivered.

On our 45-minute drive home, she was getting tired. By the time we dropped the Yeakeys off and made it home, she was ready for a quick rinse off and bed.

Bedtime

Bedtime around the house is now when we want to go to bed. She crashed out early which was good. She almost revisited her talking in her sleep and I almost lost it on her! Then she quietly rolled over and slept peacefully.

Adults don’t nap much and adults in their 30s and 40s don’t go to bed before 10 or 11. I am a bit fired up about settling in at 9:00 now. Nights can be disruptive. One of us is up 2-3 times each night. What has been different is my own waking time has shifted to 5:30 – 6:00. It honestly has been nice as it gives me time to get up and read. I also get a workout before 8:00 when our workdays are kicked into gear.

We have close friends that are in their 40s and those that are in their 60s. We are normally able to find common ground between all of us.

Today is Wednesday

Hump day! The day we look to measure how we are doing between clinic visits.

We are in the week that we can see if we are heading in the right direction for the next cycle which is due to start a week from tomorrow. So far so good. We laid down for a few minutes after lunch but were rustled up with calls on our business. It keeps you moving.

This weekend

Saturday she is scheduled to have some high school friends over for the night. They have all been patiently watching her progress here. I know it is both great to connect and a shock to see their friend going through this challenge. We are confident that it will go off without a hitch and they will quickly bring it all back to where they were over 40 years ago now.

Next week is her Birthday. She will turn 56. All she needs is cash in $1000 increments and well wishes. Seriously, just the well wishes will do. 8-). We are happy to have another year tick by knowing that despite the trials we will prevail. Her work on this planet is not finished and her story has much left to be written!

Have a great day Everyone! —- We are.

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