August 23, 2010

Daddy has had quite a few changes since my last post. Dr. Bivins, who is the pain specialist and head Doctor for Good Samaritan Hospice is working very hard to get Daddy's pain under control. Although it seems that no matter what they try Daddy's pain level stays between a 6 - 8 on a scale of 1 - 10.

He's had 3 Lidicane intravenous infusions which offered no relief. His fentanyl patch has been raised to 100 mg., he gets 100 ml of liquid morphine every 3 hrs & he is on a steroid to help reduce the swelling. They have also tried a drug called Ketamine that was in a lotion form that they rubbed on the side of his face that was supposed to numb the trigeminal nerve to ease the pain. That didn't work either. Now they are going to put him on Depakote and Dilaudid and see if those two will help.

According to Dr. Bivins Daddy's cancer is progressing and is now affecting the cerebellum which controls motor skills. Since August 9th Daddy has fallen 10 times. His legs just give out on him and he goes down. The strange thing is that it only happens occasionally. Some days his legs work fine and he has no problems whatsoever and then there are days like this past Saturday morning when Chris had to go down there 2 times in the course of 2 1/2 hours to get him up off the floor. Other than the falls there hasn't been much change in his overall condition (that we can see).

Of course as you know some days are better than others. On August 11th Chris started putting a new roof on the barn and Daddy sat on the screened-in-porch for a little over 3 hours watching them. He didn't want to come in, but Mom insisted that he had sat in the heat long enough. He walked into the house with no problems whatsoever. The next day he fell coming in from the screened-in-porch and again that evening. So we just never know what each day will bring.

Mama's motto now is "One Day at a Time" on bad days it's "One Hour at a Time"

Now that my kids have started back to school (yeah!) I will try to keep the blog updated more regularly.