Free at Last

Day 95

Freedom! Ann finally got the go ahead to leave the confines of the hospital this morning at about 9AM. However due to holdups with the pharmacy and patient transportation we actually didn't get to leave until 2PM.

Thanks to the kaput transformer at the apartment complex, I got a much closer view of what Ann has to go through while in the hospital. The room we stayed in had a murphy bed and to avoid lack of hot water and power I slept on it almost every night. Every two or three hours a nurse would come in and have to take her temperature or strap on a blood pressure cuff. Thats bad enough but the peristaltic pumps that they use for the IV rigs have alarms on them that make you think the room has suddenly been filled with a troop of angry howler monkeys! And they seem to go off for just about any reason at all, including just looking over in the direction of the IV pole, or wondering aloud if "is the pump is working?", breathing, or my favorite...sleeping. The pump's sensors and control system can actual detect the moment that a human begins to fall asleep. At that point it sets its alarm volume to maximum and starts blaring like a klaxon. Of course I'm being sarcastic, but after it happens to you more than three times you begin to wonder if it really is just a coincidence after all or not.

Ann would like everyone to know that her eyebrows have finally started to fall out completely. She is thinking that this will put her at a disadvantage when she needs to make a facial expression, like say anger for example. So she has come up with a novel solution...

I'm not sure I support it but I suppose that if she wants to have a "Burt" eyebrow we have two options. 1) we can draw it in with a sharpie or 2) she could knit one and we could fasten it in place with two sided tape.

Speaking of Ann's knitting she really has been getting quite good. I'm surprised because she has been suffering from advancing neuropathy in her fingers and hands ever since she started chemo. Each additional round has increased the nerve damage in her hands to the point that she can't really feel from her finger tips right down to 2/3rds of the way down her palms. Dr. Thomas says that this might go away with time. Operative word being "might". it also "might" be something that she has to live the rest of her life with.

Mainly Ann's knitting has been scarfs for her friends in the cold wilds of New York City. This one for example is made of what I am told is called "eyelash yarn", but she thinks it looks like someone killed and skinned a Muppet. This scarf for example looks like its make of Cookie Monster fur.

Ann is constantly complaining about how difficult it is to work with and frequently has to stop her projects and start them all over again when she discovers that somewhere along the way she dropped a few stitches. She has much, much more patience with it that I think I ever could.

On a more technical/medical front today Ann's WBC count, RBC count and Platelet counts all started to come up on there own. The RBC count of 3.64 K/uL is more than likely inflated by a infusion of two blood units from two days ago. But the platelets had increased by 10 K/uL on their own, which seems to be pretty good. The WBCs had increased by 1.2 K/uL over the same two day period. Thats a relief because if they had remained suppressed while the urinary tract infection was present it could have easily started to spread. In a worse case scenario the infection could have spread to her blood stream and without WBCs to combat it her blood could have become septic.

One last thing I wanted to close with. The room we stayed in was for some reason unbearably cold for me and I had trouble falling asleep. Mainly because the room's vent pointed directly at the murphy bed, and the covers that MDA gives you are just not all that insulating. The problem was compounded with the unseasonably cold weather Houston has been having. So yesterday night I was freezing my hinney off and I wadded my self up as well as I could to keep warm.

Ann must have seen me because, she got up out of bed, unplugged her IV pole and pump, and as quietly as she could draped her robe over me to try to keep me warm. She thought I was already asleep and I didn't want to spoil her gesture. As watched her make her way awkwardly back to bed, being careful not to trip on her IV pole or catch her tubes, I thought "what have I done to deserve this wonderful person in my life"? It amazes me that even with all she is suffering through, she loves me enough that express it in the simplest and most meaningful ways.