Saturday Swelling

It appears that Mike’s brain has started swelling again. I suspected it was last night when he wouldn’t respond to simple questions that just required him to make a choice. (i.e. “Do you want to eat the pudding or not?”) The nurse assured me it was just because he had a double dose of morphine that day, so he was exceptionally tired.

When I came in this morning, he was talking pretty well; he was given some morphine around 11:30 and fell asleep shortly thereafter. I woke him up at 2:20 to eat lunch and could tell he was not right. Both of his eyes were not focused straight ahead, and he couldn’t answer some simple questions. He knew what year it was and my name, but he answered “2008” for a few other questions as well; this is something he did before when he was having some swelling occur. (Your vocabulary lesson for the day…that is called perseverating—repeating the same thing over and over.) I called the front desk and asked for a nurse to come to the room. After more questions and incorrect answers (Did you know we have 10 children?), I called the front desk again and told them to go ahead to page the doctor because I knew we would need some more steroids. After 19 minutes passed and no drugs had been administered, I was giving them two more minutes until I was going to have to get a little ugly. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. (Can you name that television show?!?) Luckily, the nurse came by and said the doctor on call (not our regular oncologist) was on his way to the hospital and was going to come to our room first when he arrived. I really didn’t want to get nasty, but after seeing how rapidly Mike declined when we were at Duke that first day, I decided I would never let trying to be nice win out over what I think was needed medically. A short while later, the nurse came in to give Mike 4mg of steroids and said the on-call doctor ordered for him to go back to the increased dosage he was on earlier, though she’s not sure if that’s 15mg or 20mg.

Mike was able to sit up and talk after he ate lunch. There were some visitors in the room and he would make comments every now and then. After all the visitors left, I began to do another neuro check on Mike. (I do think I have this medical skill down pat!) He was still giving crazy answers to questions, but his responses were providing a little comic relief. I asked him his profession, and he told me he was a scavenger. When I asked what he scavenged, he said, "Women." Did you know that the state pays for such things? Mike is now sleeping, and I am still—nearly three hours later—waiting for the on-call doctor to stop by the room to talk with him about everything. I guess maybe he went to the beach for the day so that’s the cause for the delay in his arrival? I’ll let you know if anything else major happens.