THE LATEST ON GIL; 20 MAY 2008

Yes, we are still here!
A number of you have sent inquiries about Gil's health status. Currently, I don't have time to deal with individual responses for each of them, so I hope this will suffice. He got home on Monday, May 12, in the early afternoon. After the rehab hospital had a series of meetings and ran the usual number of tests, they determined perhaps he wasn't a good prospect for their particular program, after all. This decision was reached, primarily due to the fact that not only is he recuperating from 2 spinal successive spinal surgeries, but he also suffers from the myeloma and osteopena. So the 3 things come together to create quite a conundrum, to say the very least. It's a very specious situation, obviously.

Anyway, he had already gotten approval for a 100% coverage program from the state, called TennCare, which would allow him to go to a nursing home and have 24/7 nursing care. However, I simply cannot do that. So I opted to bring him home and care for him, myself. Yes, it's very demanding. It's also frustrating, scary, tiring---the whole 9 yards. But it's what I must do. He does have home health care and they're here about 3 days per week.

He's conscious, lucid, and well aware of all which is occurring. I shield him from anything at all which I think might cause him any sort of stress or worry, of course. I will handle all of that, on my own, in the way I feel is necessary. No, I don't need it, either, but life tends to present us with perfect dichotomies, such as this, all the time. We have to deal with them.

The only thing which is giving him any actual pain, at this time, is those darned shingles. They continue to hold him captive. The exterior marks are gone, but that little bacterial virus on the nerve ending has yet to run its course. That's what must happen, in order for it to end.

Tomorrow, we go to his radiation ocologist and to his chemotherapy oncologist. It would be so nice if we could finally get some good news for him. Daily, I'm concerned about his nutritional intake. He's holding on okay, but has lost too much weight, of course. I'm plying him with vanilla Ensure, his favorite. I'm able to get modest amounts of food into him, each day, so I don't think he'll starve to death, or anything like that.
He just needs more nitrition.

All of you are by now aware, I think, not to send any e-mail to his computer. For several weeks there, it was piling up to the point where the provider actually called me, to get it cleared, as it was clogging the holy cyberhighway. The last time I sat down, it took me nearly an hour and a half to get it all off of there, after the downloading. There wasn't even one e-mail of a personal nature, out of 267of them. They were all either forwardings or poker sites, but 85% were forwardings. So I appreciate that nearly all of you have stopped with that. Thank you very much. It's a great help to me.

Last Friday, we went to his primary care physician. It was a real struggle, getting him from the bed to the vehicle, believe me. We were doing wonderfully until we came back home. That's when he fell to the floor, as he tried to re-enter the house. I wasn't able to get him up, of course, and wouldn't have tried, as I'm not medically trained and don't know exactly how to, "handle him," without hurting him. He was on the rug in the garage, not in pain, and had broken nothing (thank God), so I covered him and got him a pillow, and then called the rescue squad. They were here in minutes, resolving the problem, efficiently, quickly, and professionally. However, I resolved, after that experience, to use a wheelchair, in the interest of his safety. He was on his walker, when that occurred. I also had a wheelchair ramp built 2 days ago, which leads into the garage.

As for me, I'm doing all right, I really am. I stay busy and I keep moving and I do what has to be done. I feel the day we stop moving, IS the day we stop moving, and I can't do that! This is the single, most challenging thing I've ever done in my life, that's for sure. Perhaps, though, it is also the most important. I'm of the opinion he's going to be able to improve and have a little more of life, even in spite of all his problems. But if he doesn't make it through all of this, I want him to be surrounded by familiar things and be in his own home. So that's all the latest and I do hope this answers all questions any of you may have had. Thanks so much and I hope this finds all of you in glowing health. It's the single most important thing in life, I've learned.

---And there you have it! More at 11--- B
- posted by Mikey @ 8:03 PM