Day 9

A pretty strange day today. Began by waking in my recliner to find home health nurse changing a bandage on my IV.  Seemed to suggest the day was pointed downward, but it turned somehow.  Highlights include getting some overdue chores done while working with housekeeper, Tami. Favorite was driving Larry IV (power chair) out the yard to the storage shed and maneuvering it through the wet grass and mud to where I had stored the remnants of RoD. (Ramp of Death). The point? Retrieve a piece of 2X4 lumber to make bed elevator blocks. Found a saw in the shed and even managed to saw the block in half without shredding my hands. Why share? Because elevating my legs in bed this way will keep my lymph edema down, and get my fat butt out of the recliner every night. Just a shred of normalcy at a time when they are few and far between.

Next was a new person coming to help me get a bath. I always get a little anxious about hanging it all out in front of someone I've never met, but I'm learning to live with that. It was a great sponge bath at a time when I must be very careful about skin-borne infections as well as all the others. And it feels great to be clean.

The trip to my long time primary care doc was perhaps the highlight, though I barely made it in and out of the car both coming and going.. He agreed to send a letter supporting my disability claim to the VA based on the draft I left him. This is no small favor, as he needs to edit it, have it processed, copies made and mailed. Better yet, he completed a lab order for the chemo clinic doc asking for three tests and a couple preventive injections they apparently hadn't thought of.

But the real kicker with Dr. O. was him sharing his opinion about my diabetic peripheral neuropathy compared to the obvious nerve damage in the lumbar spine caused by several pretty serious disc problems. His point was that he has never seen neuropathy so serious as to cause the kinds of mobility problems (can't walk a step without a walker) and loss of use of all organs in the lower unit.  Of course, this is not good news for several reasons, the worst of which is that we have to go back to square one with the diagnostics to figure our what if anything can be done to relieve those problems. I suppose it could also call my VA disability claim into some question, although he makes the point that both neuropathy and spinal damage are obviously involved. He just doesn't know how much damage to attribute to each.

What does all this have to do with pancreatic cancer? We the point of taking the time to share it is that I'm learning daily life must go on with cancer and we do have other things to think about and deal with. That's not to minimize the importance and terror of the cancer. But to say that if we dig into life, we can work with it and find a few smiles here and there.

Best to all.