Possibly. The jury’s still out on that, I think.

I got out and about today. For 20 minutes. I rode in the car with Honey to the grocery store. While he went shopping (for 99% liquid things, he noted later) I thumbed through the ads in today’s paper. Then, when we came home, he dropped me off at the mailboxes, from whence I walked the remainder of the way home. Hobbled was more like it…I was in my cowgirls slippers after all.

I still feel like shit. I feel like I’ve been run over by some kind of nasty sputtering, about-to-give-out semi truck. And then reversed upon. And driven over again. Repeatedly. Sometimes the pain meds work. Most of the time they don’t. Ususally, they are accompanied by nasty halluciongenic side effects which may sound intreguing to you, for me, assuredly, it is NOT. Nausea comes and goes. Nothing regular to speak of. When I really stop to thinik about it I feel like I have the flu. Only it’s day 13 of the flu and it still feels like day 2 of a three-day bit. Yeah the nurse says I should be “rounding a corner” at two weeks. That’s tomorrow. And believe me, missy, I am holding her accountable for that PROMISE. Honey tells me to go easy on her but I’m sick of being sick. Beyond sick of being sick. No place feels comfortable anymore, not the couch, the recliner, the chairs in the front room, the bed, the guest bed. Honey (or somebody else who is just as supportive though, not quite as handsome) has to change the bedsheets every other day because I sweat through them in a matter of minutes. I’m surviving on a mostly liquid diet because the sores in my mouth make chewing awfully difficult to enjoy a real meal. Powerade in various toxic colors, Carnation instant breakfast in your three basic ice cream flavors and your occasional juice beverage are keeping me going. I drink water all day every day in between because I keep reminding myself that it’s the quickest way to flush this chemo out of my body (and OUT i want it at this point OUT OUT OUT!). I pee almost as often as I take a breath.

It’s not that I’m being lasy or that I just don’t have any energy to do anything. Both of those are true. But I just gerenally feel like you do on the second day of a big time flu diagnosis. You tell someone, “I’ve got the flu.” and they say or think, “Ohhhh okay. Well you’ll be down and out for a couple days, but then you’ll be back to work, on your feet, back to your old schenannegans or whathaveyou.”

Must I repeat this is day 13.

Clearly I am feeling somewhat improved otherwise I wouldn’t be dancing my fingers so coherently across this keyboard. I have my Honey to thank for that. Without even trying or suggesting anything, his energy inspires me that as long as he’s by my side, I can sit in the car and go the store with him…or I can sit here and type on my blog while he eats his sammich nexxt to me (although it smell of it is revolting!). I can do it because I love him and he’s the only thing in the consistancy of this forsaken treatment that hasn’t gotten old or boring or wore out its welcome. He is my Honey and he helps me get through each day. Which makes the days without him, when he has to go to work and bring home some bacon, all the more difficult. But he does it because he loves me and the best part is he works the early shift: goes in before dawn and comes home before rush hour begins. You’d think that means I get more time with him than your usual housewife in the evenings but it doesn’t considering, in order to get a good night’s sleep, he should really go to bed at 8pm (9 or 10 is more like it). Anyway, I take what time I can get from him with a smile and I am so grateful for all the people who have pitched in in the meantime to be with me these past couple weeks. I’m really not much company. I usually just lie upstairs in the dark and sleep while Carolyn or Lindsay or whomever sits down here and lets the dogs in and out and in and out and in and out and brings me food (aka drink) or changes the sheets or listens to me cry every once in a while. It’s very nice. Everyone’s been very kind to me through this. And for that I thank you all.

Also, thank you everyone for your comments or emails of late. Reading them helps prop me up. They remind me that I’m on the right track doing all that I can do to get better for now. That there’s nothing to worry about. You can’t imagine how much joy that small smidgeon of supportive reality that brings me. So thank you for that too, all ya’ll.

And now my internal battery light is blinking. POWER IS LOW. MUST RECLINE……

I can’t promise you another chatty post like this for a while. And although it is hopeful, please don’t assume that because of this chatty one that I’m 100% better and ready to rumble again. I’m not. I’m in a haze right now. I’m going to lie down. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get another spurt of energy. Lordy, I hope so. I am so tired of this. But try as I may, I have not been able to ignore it!

Happy Weekend to all and to all A Goodnight!

Time for another Mr. Honey update. As you may have surmised, Mrs Honey is still trying to sleep off the procedure from last week and all the extra meds it brought with it.

We went to see the Embolization doc yesterday so that we could touch base with him and verify that everything is going the way it is supposed to. Doc says that everything is going good. The nurse told Mama today that Mrs Honey is running par for the course and that things are probably going to be like this for another week or so.

Mrs Honey has not touched her computer since Saturday, so if you have been sending her emails like Mr Honey has…she has not seen them yet. We will see if we can’t get her online this weekend to post some info for everyone.

Well Mr Honey has to go put away some dishes and then hit the sack…8pm is my bedtime during the week.

i’m so very tired. I literally know what it means when people say I just didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I get up to pee and take meds and drink fluid but ostly I feel only able to sleep And i have he wildest dreams, too.

I hurt on the inside but everyone says that’s the chemo working in me. that’s good.

Was at the hospital most of yesterday, hooked up to iv fluids and pain killers and ant-nausea meds. That was lame but reassuring to do because I was concerned i was taking too much or mixing bad medication. Turns out we were doing fine with the meds, just hadn’t gotten down a good ysstem for the yet. We have now and the meds are fine.

i’m to tired to tipe this. i’ll try more in a couple days.

thank you for eveything everyone. too kind.

I know that it has been a couple of days since the last update so now it is time. As you can see this update from Mr Honey is again late at night before bed…does this mean that it is a habit for me now? Anyways on to the news.

Honey has been in a lot of pain and has been very tired. She was running a low fever (never went above 101). But all of this was to be expected as told by our doctor and nurses. Honey was also a little nauseous and has had a tough time eating. Tuesday we spent most of the day at the hospital recovering. We were home on Tuesday night. On Wednesday I went back to work and my mom came by to watch after Honey. Wednesday was a day of much sleeping for Honey. Thursday Mom came by again and tag teamed with my Dad. It was another tough day for Honey. Today we were supposed to go meet with the Dr who performed the procedure on Monday and then meet with our oncologist. Honey didn’t feel like it this morning so I called and cancelled both appointments. Around 11am or so Nurse McFly called and talked to Honey and convinced her to come in to the infusion center anyways. So we did and they hooked her up to some IVs and gave her plenty of fluids. Nurse McFly said that Honey’s sodium levels were down and that this should help. I think that it did as Honey is a little bit perkier this evening.

You can now call me Nurse Honey as I am in charge of making sure that Honey has all the meds that she has to take and I make sure that she gets them on time. Hopefully Honey will be able to eat some more than carnation instant breakfast and cereal bars. Maybe Honey will be able to post some this weekend.

Honey is getting better and Nurse Honey is doing good.

Good night!

Finally getting to post about the day today. First things first…The procedure went well today. There have been no issues as of yet. YAY! They got in there, did what they needed to do, and got out. Now for the long story…

We got an early start to the morning. We dropped the dogs off at the puppy hotel so that they could play with the others while momdad play hospital. Filled out some paper work there and fed the dogs a couple of treats and we were off!

Of course any time we have to come to the hospital I get nervous and anxious so I drive without talking and worry that we are going to be late. but we weren’t. We were early! YAY! Honey got checked in and had her paperwork already filled out (more timesavers! YAY!) and they took her back for prep. She got blood drawn from her port and got her IV plugged in to her port and put on her sexy hospital gown…YAY! And we were still early! YAY! Lemme back up here for a moment. We were supposed to check in at 9:45 am and then wait to be taken back to pre-op. well, since we were early we were back in pre-op in gown by 9:45. OK so now we start waiting…Honey gets some anti nausea drugs and antibiotics.

Mama called at around 10:45 or so and I went down to meet her in the hospital lobby. We came back up to Honey and talked and around 11:15 or so it was time for Honey to go on back to the OR. At this point Mama and I headed out to the waiting area. We chatted for a long while and played with Mama’s cell phone to see how the voice dialing piece worked. Around 12:15 or so Mama and I went down and had lunch at the cafeteria. Food was good (still not as good as MD Anderson) and around an hour later we headed back up to the waiting room. I checked with the front desk and asked if Honey was back yet and they told me that they were just now wheeling her back on to post-op and that a nurse would come out to get us. So Mama and I wait…SIGH. Now let me just tell you that the nurse who was helping us all day was great in that she was very nice, she always answered our questions, and she didn’t freak-out every time I came to get her when Honey needed something. So now that being said…Mama and I waited about another hour before the nurse came out to get us. Mama and Honey exchanged some gifts and we set Mama free.

I settled in to a game of solitaire on my cell phone expecting that (and knowing that) Honey had a 5.5 hour wait until she could leave post-op and move to her room for the night. Let me tell you that Honey had been pumped full of IV fluids and had drank some water before the procedure and had apple juice afterwards and now had a full bladder. She had to pee! but being forced to lie on your back for 5+ hours does not help in trying to empty out the bladder. So she had some heavy discomfort from that. Let me back up again here. Honey got to post-op at around 1:40 pm. OK now. As we get closer and closer to the end of her prescribed bed rest she feels more and more discomfort from her bladder being full and no amount of pain meds helped with that situation. Mr Honey is trying to find someone to help out. We are trying to figure out what we can do to empty her bladder (it just ain’t happening lying down) and our nurse has taken one of her other patients up to their overnight room and has not returned yet. Finally at around 5:45 or so our nurse comes back and she gives Honey the go ahead to get up and get into the bathroom. YAY pee business gets done and Honey feels sooo much better! YAY! Now back to bed in post-op and our nurse tells us that we are now just waiting on a room to be cleaned up for us for the night.

The clock ticks.

Nurse comes back over and suggests to Honey that she order some food from the cafeteria. Honey does that and I decide that I am going to go grab some Subway. I get directions out of the hospital and across the street to Subway…It is now around 6:50 pm. I am the last customer at Subway for the day as they are cleaning everything up and turning off the open light in the window. I take my sandwich and have to hoof it back around the hospital to the front (the Subway shop is on the back side of the hospital and their are no visitor entrances on the back of the hospital) and I make my way back up to the post-op area. Cafeteria food is not ready yet and we are waiting on that. I am starting to get frustrated because the post-op area is very cramped. I eat my sandwich and we talk with our nurse and she says that we will be able to go up to our room for the night at quarter to 8. YAY!

Well we get to wait some more…quarter to 8 comes and goes and Honey still does not have her food and we are not in our room. Our nurse has to go down to the cafeteria and hand them the order form that she had faxed down earlier and Honey finally gets her food. YAY! At this time in our day I am no longer paying attention to what time it is….it is all just turning in to a blur to me.

Now we are waiting on our room. After Honey has eaten her food we can’t help but overhear some other people a couple of beds down in post-op talking about their situation. The lady a couple of beds over also has liver cancer. I asked Honey if she would like to talk to her (she sounds young and in our age range) and Honey thinks it is a good idea. I walk over and apologize for interrupting and ask the lady if she would not mind chatting with my wife because everyone else we have met so far with liver cancer has been over 50. Well needless to say we met a very nice couple named Rick and Kelly. Kelly and Honey chatted about their different ordeals and what stage they are at in the whole process and such. Kelly is just starting her journey with liver cancer so honey wrote down a page full of resources for Kelly to look at and passed on her email address in case she had questions.

After meeting new friends in post-op it is finally time to move up to our room for the night. We are now settled in and Honey has taken her pain meds and is now lightly snoring as I finish this post. It is 11:48 on my computer and time for me to try to sleep. Honey will update you some more tomorrow with our day.

Good night!

YAY!