Very Quick....

I swear I will tell this story better later, but I've had about 3 hours of sleep in the last 36.

Michael finally got home from hospital/rehab about 4 weeks ago, and was great. Weak, not exactly running miles, but great. And then about 10 days ago, he started getting weaker again, and terribly confused, and long story short, he's back in the hospital as of last night/this morning. He is ok, but they really don't know what's wrong with him. Not cardiac probably. Maybe related to the lymphoma. Maybe related to everything else. I finally got him into a room at 7:30 this morning and came home to sleep.

I am anxious and so sick of this never really knowing what the hell is going on. I'm hoping that maybe this time we;ll get some answers. And he was scheduled for his PET scan this Friday, and then they were going to start chemo, so I'm also scared that they may not be able to do that.

I will tell the story later, hopefully. I will really, really try to update more regularly (and thank you, lovely anonymous person, for asking. It means a lot to me that you care.).

Long-Overdue Update

I'm so, so sorry that I haven't updated in ages. I've just been so beyond exhausted that I haven't been able to put it together to tell the story.

Seven weeks ago today, Michael got up and was so weak that he couldn't stand. He basically slipped off a chair and onto the floor, and couldn't get up, wasn't making any sense, etc. I called the ambulance and took him to the hospital. When he was first admitted, they seemed to think that it was just a medication adjustment, not probably a big deal though not good.

Two days later, they told me that his heart was working so poorly that his other organs were shutting down, and that there was a 50% chance that he would die, and that if he didn't die, it was probably still only a matter of time, even if they pulled him through this one. And they took him to ICU, and I was terrified.

And then, two days later, everything started improving. His kidneys started working again, they did another echocardiogram and his heart was working as well as it had been a year ago, and everyone perked up and stopped talking about him dying. But he was terribly weak and completely delirious for weeks. After two weeks, he started really getting better... they moved him out of ICU and to the cardiac ward... and he was there for another two weeks.

A lot of other stuff happened in the middle, but there are two important things... the most important is that when they were trying to figure out what was wrong in the ICU, they did a lot of body scanning, and they found some unexplained masses in his lower abdomen. After a biopsy and much waiting and testing, it turns out that he has lymphoma. T-cell-rich large B-cell lymphoma, to be precise. This is treatable but scary. And he will be starting chemotherapy relatively soon, and I am... well, happy that they found this, because if the other things hadn't happened, I don't think that they ever would have caught it, not until it really was too late, because no one was looking. But scared. I have been through too much chemo and cancer and death with people I loved over the last seven years.

The other thing is that he has been in bed for the last seven weeks, and so he is terribly deconditioned. They finally released him to rehab two days ago, so he can relearn to walk. So he can get strong enough to do the chemo.

It's been a long, long haul. I hope we're on the downhill part, now, but it's still going to be a long road.

Whatever Is Prayer for You...

Michael is back in the hospital, and they are moving him to ICU this morning. His heart is not doing well, and as a result, nothing else is doing well. I can't tell exactly how serious this is, but it is not good.

We would appreciate all the positive thought and prayer that you can send.

And So On....

Every day lately has just been a matter of wondering what bad things might come along next.

Michael's heart rate is good (and his weight is great; he's 371.6 this morning), but he feels terrible, he's exhausted all the time, he's dizzy, and worst of all for me, he's really confused most of the time. He's been doing things like talking to the remote control instead of the phone and trying to eat his tea (the drink, not the meal) with a fork. I find this a little scary. Everyone seems to think that it's all about low heart function (and his blood pressure is low, too) but this is not exactly comforting to me.

Last night... or this morning, more accurately... he got up, and then I don't know what happened. He fell, fortunately not hurting himself, but we couldn't get him up and had to call the paramedics.

The cardiologist swears that he will feel better next week. We'll see, I guess.

Awfulness, Part II

My cat died this morning. And it was an accident, and I probably could have prevented it, one way or another, and I am heartbroken.

This morning, early, I heard barking in my backyard, and cat noises, too, but I was so exhausted that I didn't go check it out. I didn't even think that much about it, because (1) there's a dog that barks a lot a couple of yards over, and (2) there's a cat that likes to come by and scrap with my cats fairly often.

A couple of hours later, I woke up and found an actual dog barking and growling in my yard. I was a little scared to get close, so I called the police guy. When he came, he chased the dog farther back in the yard and found the dog... and another dog in my pool... and my beloved Crispin, dead, in the pool.

The gate to the yard was open last night... I didn't think twice about it because there are (before now) no stray dogs in the neighborhood, no small children, it's hard to get to the pool, and my own dog was away with my son, so I wasn't worried about him getting out. The cats never stray beyond the driveway, so I never worried about letting them out. But what must have happened is that the two stray dogs chased the cat and ran into the pool... the dog and poor Crispin couldn't get out.

I could have stopped this. I could have shut the gate. I could have checked out the noises when I first heard them. I could have left the big pool steps in... we took them out because they were causing problems with the liner and Michael was unable to get into the pool anyway. I could have prevented this. Yeah, I had no way of knowing. But I could have prevented it.

I loved that cat like no other. I used to think, I love you so much, something will happen to you.

Something did.

Goodbye, Crispin. I loved you the best and the most from the moment you came to me as a starving kitten. No other cat will ever be like you.

Awfulness, Part I

So... when last I posted, we were in the midst of trying to figure out why Michael was getting these spells of feeling terrible, plus trying to get him well enough for the hernia/stomach surgery that was scheduled for the end of July.

Leaving out a good part of the middle bit... two weeks ago, he went in for his annual echocardiogram, and they discovered that his heart was pumping at 15% of capacity (normal, FYI, is about 60%). They immediately put him in the hospital and diagnosed congestive heart failure. And we've spent the last two weeks in the hospital... I say, "we" because I stayed with him the whole time.

The good news... I guess, if there is really any great news here... is that they put him on a whole lot of drugs, which he seems to be relatively ok with, and that the prognosis seems... well, ok I guess. He is relatively young. He's lost a lot of weight (and they said, for whatever it's worth, that if he had not, he would probably be dead by now). CHF is rarely completely reversable, but it can get a lot, lot better. And this explains a lot of the weird symptoms that he's had for so long, although no one has at all explained why it has been so cyclical. There's a lot of hope that maybe he'll really start feeling better.

The not-so-good-news... well, the condition in general. And of course, the surgery has to be postponed for some time until cardio clears him. And he's on a ton of medications which slow his heart rate (good) but lower his blood pressure (bad, because it wasn't high to begin with, and very low blood pressure makes you dizzy and confused). I don't know... it's hard to get any perspective about this right now.

I am worried and scared and overloaded and exhausted... so is he. But his weight is the lowest ever (378), and we are home, and we can rebuild.

Saturday

It's another about-the-same day here, but I'm trying to make it different. I'm trying not to get upset. Im trying not to cry. I am trying to take care of myself.

Part of the problem with this cycle of awful stuff that happens is that Michael is so miserable; he says nothing at all (and those things that he says are mostly disturbing, like "where are all the painkillers") and most of the time, he sleeps. I feel desperately isolated and alone; I lose my best friend and confidante as well as everything else. When he's well, he's everything I need... and so, when things are like this, there's nowhere to turn.

We see the doctor on Tuesday.

And in the meantime, I will do what I can. And I will try to focus a little harder on taking some kind of care of me, too.