Time in the hospital

This is a little info about what's been going on since my admission to the hospital. As described in my last entry, the first few days were miserable; a lot of pain and a lot of visits from the doctors and having to explain everything several times. Really exhausting.

Starting Sunday and into Monday it seemed as though we had found the right combo of drugs to make the pain bearable. I was taking a good dose of morphine (pills) and some medicine for nerve pain (pills) 3 times per day. This was to provide a steady, all-day base for pain control. In addition to that, I would take dilaudid (IV) every two hours as needed if there were spikes in pain.

The challenge now is converting the dilaudid (IV) to dilaudid (pills). I'm told it's normally a simple conversion; something like for every mg of IV you need 5 mg of pills. Since I was on 4mg of dilaudid IV, we tried 20mg of dilaudid pills. Well, that didn't work. So for now we're trying other combos in hopes of getting me to 100% pills so I can be discharged.

Once discharged from the hospital on Tuesday, I will have to spend all day Wednesday in the Clinical Research Center to complete the day of testing for the trial that I missed last week due to being admitted to the hospital. If all goes well, I will be put back on the chemo pills at a slightly lower dose. Then I can return to Waterloo on Thursday.

How are my legs? Well I can walk on them, but they're still swollen, especially my left foot. We have yet to figure out why or how to prevent it from happening again.

For now, I'll take the progress and look forward to being back on the chemo and kickin' the cancer.

Email address: Chris97899@aol.com