October 5

Thursday, October 05, 2006

3:00 AM

Tuesday and Wednesday were very difficult for Penny, and today is not off to a good start.
Changes made to her pain meds did not work out very well for her the past couple of days, but it seems to be getting better since they switched her over again at midnight. The nausea is still a problem, and for the past twelve hours we have been working around almost hourly bouts of diarrhea. That was an especially long night.

Up until now, Penny was very coherent, and could speak clearly during the brief periods when she was awake. For the past 24 hours and more, she looks and sounds like she is very much under the influence of drugs. She is just a little out of touch with reality.

9:00PM

Penny is feeling much better this evening. Busy day for visitors today too. Mom and Dad, Pam, Stan, Dennis, Paula, Peter, Julie, Tanya, Jesse, Trish and me. Paula read some of the comments from her blog to her, and I read some of her email to her. She is up and watching survivor right now. First time I have seen her look at a TV for 3 weeks or so. Tanya and Trish were the last ones here, and had the best visit with Pen because she seemed to improve continuously as the day wore on.

Midnight Thursday

There is no comparison between tonight and last night. Sat up and watched the whole TV program, then sat up with me until 10:30 watching the full moon rise, and having a good chat. She seems to be adjusting to the new medication well, with the pain under control, and very little nausea this evening and no diarrhea. She got upset for a while because she misplaced her wedding band. She had tried to give it to me to wear yesterday, and I suggested it still looked better on her. The nurse and I looked everywhere in the room for quite a while and couldn’t find it. We had almost given up and decided that maybe it left the room in the laundry when I had one last look and found it on the floor under the radiator in the corner of the room.
I slipped it back on her finger, but Penny has lost so much weight that it won’t stay on. She was quite relieved to see it and insisted I put it on and went straight to sleep.

This has been a good evening for us, all things considered. It has been a great evening compared to some that we have had recently.

Mom and Dad and I had a talk with the two doctors monitoring Penny this morning. They told us what to expect based on their experience with patients in a similar condition. I could sum the whole conversation up by saying that it is almost time to say goodbye to Penny. The Doctors summed it up by suggesting that if there is anyone Penny would like to visit with, then the next few days would be a good time to do it. I won’t go into the details they provided. It is hard enough typing this as it is.

I didn’t share the details of the conversation with the doctors with Penny today. I don’t know if anybody else did either. I think I will just ask her tomorrow if there is anyone she would like to visit with that she has not seen lately, and leave it at that.

Michael