I cried when I put Sondra in the cab to go to the airport. I would have liked to have said something profound but it would have been hard talking around the huge lump in my throat. She made it home fine though I haven’t got the details yet. I will call in the morning after she has had some rest.
Dale is not going to get to leave the hospital tomorrow. They are planning on Sunday or Monday. He is holding a bit of fluid due to the kidney being shocked from too much Prograf in his system. Prograf is one of the anti-rejection drugs that he has to have but it also is toxic to the kidney so they have to watch the level. He had too high a level and so they backed off for a day and hopefully things will level off tomorrow.
He is having to take insulin and check his sugar right now. Hopefully as the dosage of Prednisone gets lower the problems with sugar and high blood pressure will be better. The other possible side effects from Prednisone are difficulty sleeping, hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, full face and cheeks, acne, increased appetite and weight gain, blurred vision, and water retention. Sheesh. He is definitely retaining fluid and it is making it difficult to breathe.
I had a minor melt down today. I had taken the shuttle to the hospital and went back to get the car so I could put gas in it while it was daylight. I did a little straightening up and I happened to glance down at my hand. I have been wearing Dale’s wedding ring since they took him to surgery and it was missing. It’s a little big for me and I was afraid I had lost it on the shuttle. I was crying my eyes out and taking my bag apart looking for it. I finally found it in the very bottom but for about fifteen minutes I was terrified. It’s crazy how huge things can be happening in your life and something little will make you come completely undone.
We have walked four or five times today so in that respect he is making progess. The doctors don’t seem terribly concerned yet and so far they tell me everything is fairly common. We really wanted to be the “poster kids” for transplant but we’ll do okay – we just have to be a little patient which we are not very good at.
Another piece of news is that we will be “in clinic” for three to four weeks as far as they know now. That means we might be here through Christmas and that is not something Dale wanted to hear. We may just have to have Christmas at the apartment. He will have to avoid crowds and stay in well ventilated places for several months anyway so it may just have to be a quiet kind of holiday. It’s not written in stone but it is a very good possibility. I know my kids will be disappointed as will we.
The synapses connected for a minute this evening and I realized that if I get a webcam for our pc then we can talk to the kids via Skype. My daughter downloaded it and called me. Even though she couldn’t speak since there is currently no microphone hooked up, she was able to see me on her screen. She made the view full screen and I could see myself across the room on the pc screen. It was a little weird but it worked wonderfully. She is so excited that she will be able to video chat with us. I know it will help if the kids can actually “lay eyes” on their dad and it will help us if we can actually “lay eyes” on them! Now we will have to try even harder to find places that have internet access over there!
repaired lawnmowers and boat motors. The nature of growing up in a lake town means that there is a steady trail of folks trying to upgrade boats and motors so it kept him busy and his reputation grew. He also did something that we called “scrounging”. He could find junk, fix it, and sell it for two and three times what he paid for it. It kept us fishing and water skiing as I grew up. It also provided me with a bicycle, a record player (for those of you who are not from my time – think of an iPod for dinosaurs), a sewing machine which I used for years, and many other things that we probably could not have afforded if not for his ability to create value from none.