Sleeping soundly. . . yea!

Bob was finally moved up to 7C, the oncology floor, around 7:30 last night (that would be Wednesday now, since I started this entry yesterday, but couldn't keep my eyeballs open long enough to finish). Well, technically, he's on a wing called simply, "Medicine," so I don't know if it's actually oncology or just happens to be on the floor with the other oncology services—you think I'd know all the nitty-gritty details down by now . . . (okay, now I know—just asked his nurse. The "medicine" wing is patients who aren't post-surgical, but who have chronic, complex medical issues. A variety of patients, not just oncology, are here. Inquiring minds gotta know . . .) Has his own private room (yea!) and pretty much fell fast asleep shortly after he was moved and settled in. I gave him several kisses (annoying as hell, I'm sure, to someone desperately trying to catch up on sleep) before tiptoeing out of the room to head for home for the night.

Took forever and a day to get Bob moved—was supposed to happen Tuesday, but a room wasn't available till last night, so much of the day was just sitting around, waiting. A few docs popped in here and there, but otherwise not much action. And that, my peeps, is not always a bad thing in our world . . . sounds like he'll be kept here at the U at least a few more days, till everything looks safe and stable enough to discharge back to home. The color in Bob's face looks so much better, his stomach isn't nearly so distended, and he was even—finally—able to sit up at the edge of the bed last night, for several minutes, the first "real" physical activity he's done since arriving Sunday night. They're still not letting him eat anything yet, want to make sure the bleeding's under control, that the bowels are "waking up," that all tests that require "nothing by mouth" have been done . . .

The bowel obstruction that flared up in the past few days seems to be correcting on its own, so the docs decided to scrap the NG tube (again, yea! as it soooo sucks to try and get one in Bob—always has issues with gagging, etc; that, and it adds the risk of irritating his GI tract, which could lead us back to more bleeding) and see how things go.

Overnight, Bob's hemoglobin levels dropped enough that they decided another scope should be done this morning, just to make sure the ulcer site hadn't ruptured. That came back fine (give me another yea!), no bleeding from the ulcer, but now he's just had yet another test, down in Nuclear Medicine (yes, nuclear + medicine, used together in the same phrase . . .), to rule out the possibility of internal bleeding somewhere else that isn't showing up on the scope. This procedure involved drawing some blood from Bob, radiating it, then putting it back into him. The radioactive blood is then tracked, via an hour long x-ray, which will show abnormal bleeding in other parts of the body, if there is any. Bob was told that if something showed up abnormal, they'd have to move him to another room, another machine and do another test. That didn't happen, so we're assuming everything turned out fine with that test, as well, though we haven't had official word on the results yet, so I won't give that an official yea! just yet . . .

The GI doc thinks the drop in hemoglobin levels could just be because Bob's been given so much fluid but hasn't been able to "output" as much (more coming in than going out, is how he put it), so maybe his blood is simply diluted with the extra fluids. . .

Bowels are finally, slowly "waking up," his urine volume is increasing, no more bleeding in the GI tract (good grief . . . to talk about my husband in such an intimate, yet highly public way—I hope it doesn't come across as disrespectful or insensitive; the reality is, the tumor and so many of the complications he's dealing with are localized in the pelvis, sooooo, kinda hard to talk about what's going on without mentioning those very important functions. . .). Doc just popped in for probably the last time tonight—gave the official word that no other bleeding was detected with the nuclear medicine test, and he's now graduating to a clear liquid diet! With all the tests that have been done in the past several days, it doesn't appear that the tumor is impacting his bowels or kidneys/urinary tract , that thus far, it's localized. . .(gimme a whole bunch of yeas!) . . . maybe soon, we can head back home. . .