I have changed the URL to this blog to avoid a repeat of the hijacking. However, I forgot to change the links from http://www.lamey-hughes.com and thanks to Bill for bringing it to my attention. It is all fixed now.
There are some readers who are technically savvy enough to have figured out the URL and created direct links to the blog--links that are no longer active because I changed the URL to block the hijackers. I hope those readers (but not the hijackers) figure out how to locate this blog again.
On to the status. Mary is living in a narcotics cloud and neither she nor I like it. The Oncology folks said last week they did receive the recommendation from the pain doc and they are glad the medial branch nerve block will be done soon (March 3). However, they prefer to delay the switch to the neurontin from the narcotics to time it with the medial branch nerve block. I plan on making some noise about that this week.
When we filled the morphine prescription, they gave us four bottles of morphine. I opened the last one just a few minutes ago. From Jan 28 to today, Mary is has used quite a bit of the stuff. Three bottles is a total of 90 milliliters (90 ml) over 16.5 days. The morphine is diluted in a liquid, 20 milligrams of morphine in one milliliter (ml) of solution. And, we cannot forget that she is also on 800mg of non-narcotic Celebrex a day plus the narcotic fentanyl transdermal patch. We keep a daily log of all her dispensed medications just so we don't lose track.
I cannot express how much we are hoping the pain doctor is right and this procedure will point to the solution to stop this absolutely horrible pain.
What does "living in a narcotics cloud" mean? Mary is pretty much non-functional and cannot take care of herself. The are moments of clarity but generally, she is woozy, droopy and out of it. She cannot fix meals, cannot completely dress herself and as I wrote previously, I will not let her shower alone because she fell two weeks ago while unattended in the shower. She is eating regular food--tonight was roast herb chicken (from Lunardis) that I served with carrots and potato that I fixed. She has been having oatmeal for breakfast every morning. Unfortunately, the volume is small and she continues to lose weight.
A week ago, Mary's daughter Lara came up from Pasadena for the week and that was a life saver. This last week, I imposed upon MaryR and Ingrid for rather substantial chunks of their time to stay with Mary. With Mary's agreement, I am investigating in-home care that would allow me to maintain my employment and give her the care she needs. The difficulty (other than expense) is that the home care employees are not allowed to dispense medicines. And, we have not let Mary do the narcotics by herself--more for safety than anything else. It is very easy to overdose which is the reason we write each dose down and as a double check I use her iPhone timer app to make sure we are waiting the proper time between doses and not giving them too soon.
As I wrote previously, we see her surgeon for a regular follow up the end of this week and the oncologist on Monday. This will give us feedback from the recent MRI and CT Scan although the pain doctor said the MRI was clean, I want to hear that from a cancer specialist if you know what I mean. I also expect we'll have a rather in depth discussion on medication for pain. What is being done now is barely tolerable.
One item about my planned eye surgery. When I saw the eye doc last week, he gave me a new prescription for my left eye's corrective lens. Well, as I left his office with my dilated pupils, I dug out of the glovebox my old pair of "blues brothers" dark prescription glasses that I bought in college in 1967 or so. Amazingly, my left eye vision is absolutely superb with that prescription--virtually the same as the new prescription he just wrote. So I guess my left eye has changed back to some former state. Who can figure this medical stuff out anyway?
åThe Blues Brothers wearing the glasses. My skin isn't that a color, I quit smoking in 1988 and I long ago outgrew my absolutely flat black wool suit from the 60's.
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