Well for those of you that know me we are back at Baylor.  We have been here since Friday morning of last week and are really hoping to come home this Friday.  Dale had a huge abscess in his abdomen and according to the docs they removed a liter of “impressive” fluid from him.  Evidently impressive is not a word you want the docs to use when they are talking about your body but we are having another abcess drained today and maybe that will help us turn the corner.  This has been the least fun experience of my life so I can’t imagine what is has been like for him having to actually go through all this stuff.  He has improved enough that I borrow a wheel chair and take him down to the garden here.  It’s funny but everytime I feel whiny we meet people who have so much more on their plates than we do. I met a lady yesterday who has a nineteen year old diabetic daughter.  She had a kidney and pancreas transplant and because of complications they have been here for 11 months!  We are blessed that we will not have to be here much longer and that we have friends supporting and praying for us (as well as keeping an eye on our kids!)  More later and hopefully posted from home very soon!

The preliminary result for the blood culture they did on Dale shows nothing growing. This is a very good sign so we are hopeful. He is at dialysis tonight and he will feel better after that. It’s amazing how small your world becomes and what you get used to very quickly. It’s also amazing how you find joy in tiny everyday things that used to go completely un-noticed. We have spent more time alone in the last few weeks than we have in years and we have realized how lucky we are. We have each other, two great kids, and wonderful friends. We also have decent health insurance which a lot of folks do not have and I wonder how they manage and if the quality of care suffers. I know it must for the most part. I know that we have a lot of folks praying for us and I feel in my heart that prayer has made the difference. Time to go to the center and pick Dale up so more later.

Well if I try to assess things objectively, Dale is complaining more today so that means he is better I think. He still can’t eat as much as he should but in the last two days he has gotten bathed and his hair washed and while those things pretty well knocked him out it was a very short time ago that he didn’t even care. He is still running temp and maybe we will get news about that tomorrow. He is up a little more and likes to go for a ride just to get out of the house. He is asking questions about the time frame of the last few weeks – he lost at least a whole week and that has to be pretty unsettling. His vision is quirky but that can happen when you aren’t getting good dialysis so we will ask the doc about it if it continues. He still gets hiccups and loses his breath and that causes pain but it seems to be happening a little less frequently and with a little less severity. I’m afraid to be hopeful so pretend this blog is written in a “whisper”

Well friends are bringing supper every night next week. I broke down and admitted that I just can’t do it all. I can cook for Dale and right now I’m pushing protein shakes at him, but the kids are being neglected and I just can’t seem to get it all done. Today they are helping me get the house cleaned up and that will help my frame of mind. I worry about them. The line between parent and child gets blurred around here pretty often right now. My emotions are all over the place and they are spending some time petting me. I’m tired and I know it isn’t that I’m tired physically – I’m tired from worry and I’m trying to get a few things done today just to keep my mind from working overtime while we wait for the results of the blood culture. I helped him bathe this morning and maybe this afternoon after some food and hefty napping we can tackle his hair. We sat on the back porch for a little while with the sprinkler going and it was relaxing for both of us. We talked about what to do next if this infection is not a problem. He had talked about going back on peritoneal dialysis but had some apprehension about the possibility of peritonitis happening again. From what I am reading there is a higher chance of that exact thing and there is scarring that occurs with the infection so it is possible he would not get as good a dialysis if it would work at all. We will probably end up with him getting a fistula in his arm and getting hemodialysis til he can get a transplant. This means some lifestyle and diet changes for awhile but you have to be infection free for so many months before you can be a candidate for transplant and I’m not sure his body could handle going through this a second time. Break time over – time to get back to work. The bookshelves have about an inch of dust on them and I hear them calling me…

If so please give it a a hug, a snack, and clean jammies and return it to me – I need it. Dale has had hiccups off and on (mostly on) since 4:30 this morning and my washing machine drain is being cantankerous. Sometimes it doesn’t want to work and when that happens I remove the drain hose from it’s little compartment in the wall behind it and insert a funnel and pour in some super drain de-clogger. I set a timer and wait fifteen minutes, pour some warm water in to flush it out and voila! Theoretically a nice clean working drain. I went through that process today. While I was waiting for the timer to go off I thought I would have breakfast (at 10:30 in the morning) and two phone calls later I was pouring the water in and thought I’d go ahead a start the laundry and then maybe I could go finish my breakfast. I started the washer and went to add water to a cup of bleach to pour in and when I walked back in there was water on the floor. did you know that when the drain hose isn’t in the drain pipe that water runs out as fast as it runs in? Duh. Luckily I had another load of dirty clothes sitting there waiting so I stopped the washer, mopped up, re-inserted the drain hose and went back to eating breakfast. I finished at about 11:30 – just in time to start fixing lunch. I’ll fix Dale something healthy but I’m thinking Bailey’s soup for me…

I should know better than to make plans. This day didn’t go anything like I planned but what else is new. Dale started running fever and I called the doc in Dallas and we ended up at the dialysis center with them running a blood culture and loading another antibiotic into him. They will dose him again tomorrow and the prayer this time is that he doesn’t have an infection in the permacath. That would NOT be a good thing. We won’t know the results of the culture for two days but they are giving the antibiotic just in case rather than wait. I’m just going to think it into being no big deal, the antibiotics will take care of it and that’s that.

Tomorrow is a wonderful word. For a short while there I wasn’t sure I thought so but I am willing to take a chance on jinxing things and saying maybe it’s going to be okay. I have to run some errands tomorrow and I am going to make a promise to myself that I will spend a little time working on xhtml and css. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments at a time but I think I’m starting to slow down a bit. Dialysis went pretty well tonight except that Dale had a fever and even though he was wrapped up from head to toe in a blanket he was shivering when I went to pick him up. I had just finished mowing the rest of the lawn with the kids but we drove home with the heater on. I thought my hair was going to catch fire before we got home but he warmed up and after supper, antibiotics and tylenol I think he may sleep better tonight.

I am a fixer. If there is a problem I want to figure it out, and then do what is needed to fix it. When I can’t fix it – I don’t do well. This is a part of my personality that carries through into every part of my life. As I get older I run into more and more things that I can’t fix and I don’t mauch care for that. The only thing I know to do is to take a little time each day and see if I can “zone out” with something that takes every bit of my mind and temporarily shut down the stress. Maybe if I find some little problems that I CAN fix, I can keep the unfixable ones from making me too nuts. That and a latte with a little Baileys’ thrown in…

My attention span is so short – “how short is it?” you ask. Taking care of Dale is pretty demanding right now and in between keeping him fed and comfortable and trying to take back my house which was pretty much run by two teenagers for two weeks is proving a daunting task. I start to do something and Dale calls and I forget what I was doing before that and start something else and yesterday evening my son walked up to me and asked what was for supper and I had to grab the kitchen counter and stare out the window while I collected myself so I wouldn’t take his head off. I had been trying to start supper for 4 hours and at that point as long as Dale got fed I really didn’t care if anyone else ate. By 7 P.M. I was trying to finish the dishes (the dishwasher croaked while I was at Baylor with Dale), trying to fold the last load of clothes for the day, putting up food, getting Dale a snack and then while Dale napped I mowed about half the back yard. At 9 P.M. I asked Jessica to sit with her dad while I took a shower which by the way is a great place to cry your eyes out without anyone knowing. At 11:30 Dale had his pain pill and I fell into bed, read half a page of my book and that’s the last thing I remember til this morning and now it’s time to start all over again. Dale felt a little better this morning and every tiny bit of progress is reason to celebrate. Yesterday was rough on him because we had to go to the dialysis center where he had to sign all the forms and answer all the questions to get started on hemodialysis again. He was in pain by the time we got through and it is such a depressing place and he feels like he is starting over from where he was two years ago. He really isn’t because we can still do transplant once he gets clear of infection and built back up, but right now while he feels so bad physically it seems that way to him. He is worried about bills and work and everything and keeping him motivated and hopeful is as important right now as the physical stuff. My mantra these days is just get through this day – for him and for myself. Last night Dale said I was an angel.  I told him I would remind him of that when he was well and got irritated with me about something.  I’m saving brownie points for the future when I plan to have my nervous breakdown.