Things are going fairly well for David. He's doing ok on his new medicine dosage schedule, no pain and he's a little more alert. Yesterday he stayed awake all day until after dinner when he took a little nap and today he took a short nap then was up in the wheel chair for 2 hours. We had to lay him back a bit but we checked his blood pressure a couple of times and it was good. Dave bought an electric cuff when he was having irregular heart rate problems a few years ago. (nothing serious) 103/69 at first then 104/76 after a while, in the range of normal for him as it's been fairly low and he wasn't feeling too bad (that he mentioned) so we're just doing what he can tolerate. Owen and I are getting pretty good at moving him around. I've found that it's easier to let Owen do the up/down controls on the lift and I do more of the maneuvering. Owen likes that better anyway since we got the electric lift instead of the hydraulic one you have to pump up.
The nurse is checking with the oncologist to find out what kind of time frame we're looking at for him being up before the Dr is comfortable letting him come in to the office.
Yesterday we had a rough day. Not medically, just emotionally. Everything that could be frustrating was frustrating. The massage nurse wasn't here on time, the school nurse called home to say Owen was sick and needed to be picked up... she said he had a slight fever of 98.9. In my universe that isn't a fever! As it was I think he was just dehydrated. He said his stomach hurt and when he stood up he got dizzy and a little pasty looking (more than usual) so I brought him home but not for 45 minutes because the nurse was late and I couldn't leave until she got here. Ordinarily I could have driven the mile to pick up Owen and left Dave alone but I had to be here to let the nurse in since Dave can't really let her in and I didn't feel good leaving a note on the door saying that I wasn't home and to come on in! So long story short (too late) the lunch place I went to wasn't open, we ended up not eating until 2:00 because the bath nurse got here right after that and Owen apparently wasn't sick he was just dehydrated and after drinking water and eating lunch he felt fine and today he was back to normal. Oh and I got super annoyed about lunch and ended up ordering pizza. Way easier. I got lunch cleaned up then Owen and I had eye dr appointments. I'm glad he was feeling better because I didn't want to have to reschedule. His eyes haven't really changed but he got a new pair of glasses anyway so that he has a backup and they're a little more grown up looking. I just ordered contacts because my eyes haven't changed enough to need new glasses. Not that I've been wearing my contacts lately... The Dr commented that he's impressed my eyes haven't changed more because stress tends to really ruin your focus. He noticed a little of that but not what he expected. OH! And my new atomic clock is somehow off by a half hour! How does that even happen?! The instructions say to move it to a wall that faces colorado. lol... oy. It was not that any one thing was all that frustrating but all of them together made for an un-awesome day.
There are aspects of being a full time caregiver that are starting to wear on me a bit. It's not really the taking care of him that's wearing on me, it's more the fact that it leaves me very little time/energy to do other things that need to be done. Things people can't really help me with like taking a shower and actually drying my hair instead of putting it straight into a pony tail. It seems like such a minor thing but it takes energy that I would rather expend doing other things or by the time I get around to it I'm too tired to flat iron my hair for 10 minutes. My concentration is pretty low and I don't feel like I'm accomplishing much. Emotionally I'm doing ok for the most part, really. I'm just tired. I'm not sleeping great at night and during the day I should be napping but I don't get much of a chance to. I have a hard time sleeping if it's quiet because then my brain is on overdrive so I sleep with the TV on but I know that's not as restful for David.
On the bright side, Olive the black cat of doom as Owen dubbed her when we got her, has been super attentive lately. Especially yesterday. She is definitely David's cat. She has discovered that she can lay next to him on his bed and cuddle up to him. Over the last couple of days she's barely left his side. It kind of makes me nervous since she's the cat that slept on his pillow the night he got more sick but I think this time she's just being a therapy cat more than anything. I hope. It gives him a chance to pet her and feel/hear her constant purring and comfort. He seems to rest well when she's around so she's welcome to hang out any time unlike the other obnoxious cats. I'm glad she's being social.
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