The last few days

It's been a few days since I've written any updates.

Saturday was an entertaining day. Patrick and Minh Chau came over around 3PM. We just hung out and talked about stuff for a couple of hours, then we took a trip to Ellicott City. They had never been. We went to the Bean Hollow and had coffee/hot chocolate, and Emily and I had some food as well. Then we walked around a bit and looked at the crazy old buildings. Once home, we ate some of the chocolate cake the Emily and I made earlier in the day. We did the whole thing from scratch, even the icing! Never done that before. The cake was really really sweet. The icing is like marshmallow. Then we watched S12E01 of Top Gear (UK), which Pat had never seen. Don't know if he liked it as much as Emily and I do! By the end of the day I wanted to die because of all the sugar I had consumed. Other than that it was a very entertaining day. I was quite tired by the end of it. I think it was the first time I had gotten up at a decent hour (8:30 I think), actually done things, and not passed out in a "nap" for several hours in the middle of the day.

Sunday was not a good day. I just didn't feel quite right for most of the day, which kept me in bed. Then I felt nauseous again around 3:00 and took a phenagran. By about 3:30 I was feeling a good bit better and finally got up and moved around. It was altogether not a very memorable day. I was very cold as well. Even though the house is somewhat warm compared to where he had it last winter (we're keeping it between 67-70 when we're home), it still feels really cold. That's another reason I just hang out in the bedroom and fall asleep: there is a nice electric oil radiator that makes the room feel so snuggly. I think my stomach problems are compounded by staying sedentary so long. I need to get up and move around, get those stomach muscles doing something. It's like a catch-22 though.

Today, Monday, I had my appointment at Johns Hopkins with Dr. Diaz. The drive there was absolutely terrible. We went through the city rather than "all the way around" on the beltway. The thing is about driving up here: it's often faster to go "all the way around" on the highway than to take the direct route. The roads are horrendous and you get to pass endless blocks of depressing dilapidated buildings. We finally got the hospital and then had to wait for a seemingly endless amount of time for a minivan to poke around an absolutely huge parking garage before being able to park. Then we had to make our way across the JH medical campus to the building where our appointment was. It was quite a process. But after it was all done, the meetings actually went well. I didn't get any sense of hubris from any of the people we met, which was surprising and refreshing. I met several pharmacists first, then a surgical fellow, then Dr. Diaz. Dr. Diaz was very amiable and pretty much reinforced and agreed with all the other advice I have had. He said they would be more than happy to treat me (obviously) and that now that I am "in the system" I can come back whenever I need to. I think the pain in the ass associated with getting to JH is enough to deter me from going there for treatment, at least initially. I believe I am going to stick with Dr. Kasamon, at least initially, and see how things go. I am meeting him again in a couple of days where I hope to work out some of the more practical matters of the treatment (when is blood work done, how long does it take, how am I going to deal with the portable IV pump, how will it be removed, etc. etc.). It was a federal holiday so I spent the rest of the day at home (but Emily had to go to work). Which meant I ate some lunch, got bored, and then fell asleep. (doh!) I'm up and moving around now though.

Tomorrow I hope to finally get back to work. I've been in a little bit of pain today for whatever reason. When I got out of bed and started moving a bit, around 4:00 I felt a bit of pain in my back/abdomen. The abdominal pain felt a bit like constipation but I do not actually think that is what it was. I took a Tylenol around 5:00, didn't feel a whole lot better around 6:00, then took 5mg oxycodone. That appears to have done the trick. So I'll be sure to have my full array of medications at my disposal tomorrow. But if I can get up and not feel sick to my stomach, I'm going to have a "normal" day, by god!

The surgeon at JH I talked to said that six weeks a good target for "normal" feeling recovery from such a big surgery. They were all not surprised to hear of my various gastrointestinal woes and said they should all clear up in time, but I'm not all that far out from the surgery yet. I'll buy that, I think!