Friday the 13th

It's 2am, all's quiet and peacefull in the halls but a nightly nuisance comes to visit. Not a nurse, not the doctor but last night's dinner, ewwww.

The morning was bright and held much promise for a good day until I was awakened by breakfast. I quickly downed my cheerios and juice in anticipation of an easy day preparing for chemotherapy that night. Little did I know that behind the scenes the hospital had determined today was going to be a dooozy.

Before my breakfast was gone they sent Shin the Barbarian he had a physical therapy badge on but I could tell he wanted more. I've been here a week and a half with no physical therapy but today, today of all days a PT shows up. After a grueling half hour of PT that would have wore out a healthy 70 year old. Arms, legs, weights, up, down, no water breaks, no bathroom breaks, relentless. Then Shin says "now we're going for a run." So we grabbed the walker, belted me up, and out the door and around the corner we inched. Only to be stopped in our tracks by a gurney with my name on it. PT over, Shin disappointed the torture was over warned "I'll be back!"

Unbeknownst to be me I was summoned to X ray. Sounds simple enough but do to the compression fractures in my spine, cracked ribs, pain in the hip from lesions, and exhaustion from PT I knew it would be painful, long and tiring. And it was! I must say however the X ray technicians did their best not to cause additional pain or damage. When I returned I found Dale and Hillary waiting (as usual) for me to get back.

Lunch: Tilapia, I like fish, I love fish but without even opening it I knew there was trouble lurking underneath that lid. I peaked, I puked :-(

The day before I had done 2 hours of prep work to set up the radiation for a lesion on my right hip so that today's treatment would be an easy 15 minutes. HAH I arrived at radiation to hear that a new doctor had accidentally messed up all of the laser and CT guided settings. Meaning the 2 hour prep work I had excruciatingly suffered through the day before would have to be re-done. They assured me that after the prep work they would do my treatment so I would not have to come back again today. They were true to their promise and gave me the treatment, finally. They asked if I was cold and I replied "those aren't shivers but spasms." Which were on my left side fortunately, so they could continue working on my right hip. After a short prayer and a few deep breaths they were able to finish the radiation treatment.

I was thrilled to get back to my room around 5pm but was to nauseous from pain for my dinner at 6pm.  Melting into bed anticipating that all that was left was chemo later that night. I had forgotten about my pre-chemo regimen which started about 7pm with drips, bags, pills and always checking those vitals. Who would have thought that chemo would be the easiest part of my day? At 9 I got my chemo drugs and settled in for a nice, peaceful, long rest. Ironically no visitor at 2am, yah, it waited until 3:30am, darn-it.

Friday the 13th, I'm not superstitious...
(Dictated by Kevin to Hillary)