Ongoing Recovery

It's bee na few days since I had the chance to update everyone. Caren is getting a little stronger everyday. It's become clear that the recover is going to be measured in weeks and months, not days and hours. Every day that she can do something she couldn't do the day before is a good day. Some of the victories are as little as staying awake for more than an hour at a time or walking from the bedroom to the kitchen without a pit stop.

In the last 24 hours we've been able to add some protein to her diet, baked chicken last night, and she was able to get up and shower this morning without almost blacking out. Since we left the hospital, her blood pressure has been pretty low and every time she stands up, "the world starts to go black." I don't believe we've had any actual loss of consciousness, but we've come close a few times.

The chills and hot flashes seems to have abated also. She hasn't mentioned them in a couple days, so either they went away all together or they're at least to the point where they're not as bothersome. I really think the issue was her fluid level. I don't know if it was the blood loss post-surgery, the blood thinners, or something else entirely, but ever since we've been making a concerted effort to increase her fluid intake, the symptoms have started to get better. I have no idea how much water and juice she's drank in the last two days, but I'm willing to bet it would be measured in the gallons.

Her clotting factors are still not where they want them so we've been messing with her medication doses to try to get the right combination. We haven't been making it up as we go along, the surgeon calls us every Tuesday and Friday after he get s copies of her latest lab values and tells us how to tweak things. We'll see how it looks on Tuesday.

Our next visit with the surgeon is next Friday, the two week follow up. It'll be odd returning to the scene of the crime. I'm not sure how I'll feel walking around that neighborhood again. I started to feel like I was living there by the end of our stay. I doubt it'll feel like much of a homecoming though.

Everyone else up here is good. The boys are great, but oh so much work. Sadie, the puppy, continues to be the most work of them all though. She's a good girl, just such a puppy, and damn near 50 pounds now to boot! I nearly came unglued the other day when, after a morning that started at 5:05 AM and was ripe with screaming, crying, hitting, kicking and did I mention screaming? I was changing Sam's second, absolutely disgusting poopy diaper of the morning, when Sadie decided she was not getting enough of my attention and grabbed her rubber, chewy bone. First she tried to put it in Sam's mouth, which her was not happy about. Then she sat on his head and tried to put it my mouth (let me remind you that Sam is on his back with a load of crap nearly oozing out of his diaper on to the carpet). I pushed her away from Sam and told her to go lay down, a command she hasn't quite grasped yet, because she obviously confused my order to go elsewhere with the phrase "Drop that bone right in the pile of poo between Sam's legs." A common mistake.

So there I am, one hand holding Sam's ankles in the air, the other hand holding a poop-laden wipe, Sadie is sitting next to me full of pride, the bone in actually standing erect with one end buried in Mount Sampoopious, and now Sam is screaming because he has no idea what the hell is going on. I can look back on that moment now and smile, even chuckle a bit at myself. I assure you, there was no laughter in the room at the time. I started growling, actually growling. I don't even think I was capable of coherent speech. Fortunately, Sadie got the picture and disappeared. I have no clue where she went, but it was the smartest thing she's done in her short time on this planet. Sam just lied there and looked at me between his knees with this "please tell me this is almost over look". I left the bone in place and finished wiping the shiny, white butt hovering over it. The diaper, load of crap and bone all went by-by in one package. Sam got a fresh diaper and on we went.

That was the moment where I was able to say, "it can't get much worse." I think that those times are important. It was almost a turning point for the whole week. I f I was able to get through the kicking, screaming, tantrum-full, Mt. Sampoopious few hours, I can handle just about anything coming down the pipe. I'm not saying I handled it gracefully, I think my voice hurt from yelling so much, but we got through it; no one got hurt (well, at least no permanent injuries), no one seemed to hate me too much, and the house was still standing the next day, what more could we ask for?