I'm getting used to saying the good news but the bad news, the positive but the negative - but today I'm glad to report pretty much all good news. I spoke with Dr. Nakamura this morning. He had been to see Sile early but came back later, at my request, to fill me in. Sile's blood numbers continue their upward climb - she's at 1.5 on the white blood count and 48 on the platelets - enough that Dr. Nakamura said her response has been "robust". (Good job, Frank!). Her numbers have already reached a level that they are sufficient for her to leave the hospital! One immediate benefit of her robustness is that Nakamura has removed a couple of the antibiotics from her regimen - whether because of this or something else the stomach and intestinal problems have improved a bit.
He also explained the source of the back pain. The rapid increase in bone marrow activity (the bone marrow is the site where all the blood cells are manufactured) causes expansion of the marrow, which puts pressure on the bones. This causes joint and bone pain for many patients at this stage of the game. With Sile's history of spinal fractures, this pain becomes extreme. The good news is that he expects the increase in activity to begin tapering off in the next couple of days, which will gradually alleviate the pain. In the meantime they seem to have worked out a pain management regime that is keeping Sile's distress under control. She slept most of the time today, partly in recovery from yesterday, I think, and partly from the steady flow of the pain medications. If you saw her today for the first time you might not be too impressed, but believe me, in comparison with yesterday we're in good shape. Nonetheless, Sile's main question for Dr. Nakamura remained: "If all you doctors are so happy then why do I feel so bad?"
Being here on my own I've become very aware of the need to keep myself healthy - if I start to go down the tubes then there is little good I'll be able to do for Sile or anyone else. My new mindset is that my only job for this week is to take care of two people: Sile, of course, and me. It's interesting what a difference in my stress level just framing the situation like this has made. No huge changes in my routine, but I am taking more small breaks to get away from the room, take a few minutes outside, relax a bit.
In addition, I took a lunch time excursion, first to a swimming pool in Sierra Madre, a nearby town. Here's the sight that greeted me when I came out of the locker room:
Those of you who know my penchant for swimming in any body of water within a 10 mile radius of where I am can imagine my delight. And then dismay when I got into the water: it was heated to 90 degrees! Not exactly conducive to energetic exercise, you might say. I decided I had to pretend I was in a hot springs (it was really that warm) and stretched and lolled my way around in the water for a half hour or so. Totally pleasant, but not exactly what I had in mind.
The next part of my plan was to take myself to lunch at Janet's Mediterranean cafe - a little hole in the wall place in a strip mall near the hospital where Jim and I enjoyed delicious lamb kebabs on our first night in Duarte. But of course there was a hand printed sign on the door: Closed on Monday. Sigh. I made do with a sandwich from the little market next door, which turned out to be a very interesting stop, full of unusual middle eastern groceries, such as:
The Row of Pickles
and The Wall of Spices.
Southern California really is a melting pot. More on that in a future post, perhaps.
No comments:
Post a Comment