Crappy DAY!

The biopsy results will not be ready until tomorrow, but preliminary exams are not good. Dad's right lung is completely blocked and the left lung is mostly blocked. The only air he is getting is a very small amount from the left lung. Next week we will meet with the doctor to determine the course of treatment. No wonder the poor man can not breathe.

My staph infection is alive and well. The doctor had to lance a new abscess very, very near the old one that is nearly healed. I am back to square one and on massive doses of antibiotics again along with an ointment to put in my nose since the staph lives in the nose. Of course, I am back in major pain with another hole in my ass! Tomorrow I go back to the doctor and he will decide if he will put me back in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Crap....just CRAP! Even the doctor's wife had one of these abscesses on her butt last week. He said the infection is rampant. It will just not die and I have to get well so I can take care of my parents. My brother has had to do way more than his share and I am so sorry for that. He has never complained and he never would, but his plate is full!

Make it STOP!

I started feeling some pain while sitting at the hairdresser's yesterday, so I took a mirror when I got home to look at the wound that is almost healed. There is yet another damned abscess coming right beside the other one. CRAP! I called home health to come out and take a look. She said yep another is starting. She called my doc, who is closed on Wednesdays. He is calling in more antibiotics and I am to be in his office first thing in the morning. If it needs to be lanced, he will do it before it reaches ER stage like I did last time.


My brother has already stepped up to take Dad to his biopsy tomorrow morning.


On a positive note......I was walking around outside a few minutes ago and a stanger stopped her car in the middle of the street and told me how beautiful my flowers are! AWWWW! I needed that! Even though I can't mow the yard or weed eat or anything else, she still thinks it's pretty!

Almost done!

Home health told me today that I am almost done with them. Probably one more visit next week and then a discharge. That makes me very happy. I still have to be very careful for fear of pulling apart what has grown back together. I got permission to sweat some as long as I shower off immediately after I finish my work. I do that anyway, so no problem there.

I'm traumatized!

No one hates snakes more than I do. They petrify me, no matter how sweet and nice they are. My sister-in-law told me to come outside for my brother to show me something. I told her NO because I don't trust him. She promised he wouldn't scare me. I went outside and he was standing just off their patio holding two kingsnakes by the tail that were mating. They were all wound around each other and he was holding them up by the tail. He took them back and let them go because they are GOOD snakes! Whatever! Now I will have to watch for their whole damn family when they have the babies!!!

Way cool!

I got my application for Master's Practice Rounds tickets through email today. That is way cool. I didn't even know they had that information. I'll be sending that back to them pronto. I will try for all 12 tickets, which was what I got last time I got any. I used some and sold the rest. Good cash from Ebay!

Dad's update

My brother took Dad for his appointment today and the doc said the spots were suspicious. He will be doing a biopsy on Thursday morning at 7. I will take him to get that done.

What to do!

I am not allowed to sweat until my wound is completely closed. Since it's already 90, that means I can't even go outside because I start sweating immediately! I have found that I can go out and trim one azalea, then go back inside. So far, over three days, I have trimmed 3 azaleas. At this rate, they will grow back before I finish. It's time to trim and fertilize now!

WooHoo!

Yesterday was my last daily visit from home health nurses. The wound has closed enough to not need packing, so now the protocol is Neosporin and a sterile 4 X 4 three times a day. I can do that and they will come once a week to look at it until it is totally healed. Today I felt free again because I didn't have to wait around for the nurse to come. Actually, I took my first trip to Shreveport in two months and got the car washed. I also met the Thursday lunch group for lunch today. It was nice to have some semblance of normal back again.


Tomorrow my dad has an appointment with the pulmonologist. My brother will take him to the appointment and I will just wait at home to hear from them. I'm sure they will schedule a biopsy.

Yep, we blew it!

Remember a couple of months ago when we leased our land all around the home place for $100 an acre? Now people are getting 4, 5, and 6 thousand dollars an acre. There has been a huge natural gas find in the area, maybe even the largest ever found! My cousin leased over 600 acres at 4,000 an acre....Do the math! That's over 3 million dollars! He and his wife are on a Mediterranean cruise right now. Another friend leased 182 acres at $3000 an acre. I am happy for all of them, but sorry we were too hasty to lease. I would have been able to fill my car with gas!

Update

I went to see about Dad this morning. He doesn't feel well, but he is trying to do a few things in the garden. He is just glad to know there is a definite reason for his breathing difficulties. He asked me today how do they operate on lungs. I told him they put the patient on a heart/lung machine while they operate and he has already been on one of those machines when he had his heart bypass. We are hoping for an appointment with a pulmonologist this week.

I am continuing to improve. The nurses seem to think this will be my last week of daily packing. The wound is almost closed and ready for just a small bandage to keep it clean along with some neosporin.

Dad and I dug our first potatoes this morning. We found enough for them to eat tomorrow along with some turnip greens and turnips. I think I'll go there for lunch tomorrow!

Not so good news!

I took Dad for his CT scan today and before we got home the doc had called my brother and told him there are 3 suspicious spots in Dad's lungs. He would not say that it was cancer, but he gave indications that he suspected that it was. Next week he is trying to get Dad in to a pulmonologist, who would do a biopsy to be sure. Dad is not upset. I am! When the nurse came late today to change my packing, my blood pressure and pulse were considerably higher than usual. She said it was directly stress related. Dad, in my opinion, is too old and frail to undergo the rigors of chemo. I just don't want him to have to do that. Personally, I think he would choose not to do it if it came to that, but I don't know that for sure. He told us his biggest problem was worrying his kids. Mom told him to just be glad they had some kids to worry!!!

Now I'm worried!

I'm not much of a worrier, but my brother just called me and told me Dad's doctor called and told Stewart that there was a spot on Dad's lung and he wanted to schedule a CT scan for tomorrow. The doctor will be able to talk to the pathologist after the CT scan and pretty much know if it is cancer.

Crapola...AGAIN!

The nurse came early today so I could go take my mom to a dinner on the grounds at the cemetery where her family is buried. When I took her home, Dad was gone fishing with my brother, so I went home to rest so Mom could rest as well. I had barely been home when my phone rang and my brother told me the ambulance was on the way to get Dad. Dad had passed out in the boat, thrown up, and soiled his clothes. My brother thought it was over! He brought Dad around and took him home where the ambulance was waiting. Dad had to take a shower and change clothes before he would see the ambulance attendants. They checked him out, but he was very, very pale. We spent a couple more hours at the ER where they did all kinds of tests. They wanted to keep him overnight, but he convinced the doc he would rest better at home. The tests didn't show anything major, but he could have had a slight heart attack or slight stroke. The CT scan had not been read yet, but my brother took him home. I spent most of the ER time out in the waiting room where there were some soft chairs because I could not sit on the hard chairs in his ER cubical.

Feeling better

Finally things are beginning to look up. I am feeling better. The wound is healing really well. I even looked at it today and saw that it was closing up in the middle before the ends. It was 4 inches long, so now I have to be careful not to pull that apart that has hooked back together.

Very disturbing...

I have been battling diarrhea for the 3 weeks that I have been out of the hospital. Part of that time I was taking an antibiotic that had that for a side effect, but I have been off all antibiotics for a week. Today I went back to the doctor. When I told him what was happening, we discovered that I came home from the hospital with a prescripton for colchicine with instructions to take 4 times a day. When I told him that, he said he had never written a prescription for that for 4 times a day. The pharmacy must have misread it. He is sure that is what has been causing the diarrhea. It's been so bad that I could not eat and my whole body is just incredibly weak from dehydration and no food. Now I have another med for the stomach distress. I am really, really tired of being sick. Today I have been able to eat a few crackers and some gatorade. A few minutes ago, I ate some watermelon. We'll see how things go tonight. Yesterday, I was ready for someone to just kick the dirt in on me. That's how bad things have been.

same ol' stuff

Not much has changed. I went to lunch with the ladies yesterday, but couldn't stay long. I just can't sit for very long. I have already opted out of a lunch honoring my friend's father at Barksdale Air Force Base tomorrow. He was a P.O.W. and is honored every year there. Tomorrow is my dad's birthday and I have already opted out of going to dinner at our favorite catfish place because it is too far away and I can't sit that long. Tomorrow is our krewe's Cochon de Lait and golf tournament, so I am missing that as well. Let's face it. I am just still a mess! I just hope I can make it to Dad's house long enough to say happy birthday...he's 86!