dbubley is back in the hospital. They sent her from the nursing home this aftenoon. I'm on my way out the door to go to KPPACC and pick up her stuff, then to the hospital. She is currently still in the ER, but they are going to admit her. Poor baby has rarely had any solid food for over 3 weeks. I hope they can figure this out. She has places to go and people to see! Even if they are only more doctors and more treatment - they count.

dbubley's oncologist and radiology doctor said they need to see her asap and made an appointment for her next Monday.  Currently she is in Kaiser's skilled nursing facility (KPPACC) and as of this morning, she is still not able to sit up for transfer to a wheelchair.  If this is still true next week, then she would need to be transported by ambulance and gurney.  They are more than happy to arraign this transportation, but it is not covered and would cost us between $150 and $250 to do this.  They say it is not covered because it is "not medically necessary" because she does not need a paramedic to accompany her.  I tried to point out that her doctors think this appointment is medically necessary or they would wait until she is out of KPPACC.  If it was only going to be this one time, I would probably just pay the money, but she will need 2 more appointments to calibrate the equipment and then anywhere from 10 - 20 radiations treatments or more.

I'm taking a break from making phone calls, because my head is going to explode if I have to ask someone one more time "if her doctors say this appointment is "medically necessary" (so she can start radiation asap before the cancer starts to grow again) and she is not able to sit in a wheelchair by Monday, why would this NOT be covered as a medically necessary transportation.

shit 

A Taste for Dance:

Long, long night in the ER - is there any other kind? 
 
When I got there, they had not given her anything for pain yet because they were waiting for the urine and blood work.  Most of the time was spent giving her history over and over again to each doctor (1 intern, 1 ER doc and 1 internal medicine doc.)  The ER doc finally ordered morphine after we'd been there for a few hours!  If she didn't already have back pain, she would have from laying on the stupid gurney for so long.  While both doctors were very nice, they each decided they had to have "the end of life" and DNR talk with us.  Dbubley was in so much pain, she agreed to a Do Not Resuscitate order!  The ER doc asked us how aggressively we wanted her to be in searching for the cause of Dbubley's pain.  At this point they'd done nothing more than take her history, given her pain meds and looked at the wounds she has (one on her abdomen, from the January surgery is still healing and several on her butt, which is skin breakdown from the cancer drug.)  We told her short of doing surgery tonight; we wanted her to aggressively seek the cause of the pain. 

The next step was an abdominal CT scan, which the ER doctor didn't think she would fit in.  Dr. ER said they have a strict 300lb limit and the last time Dbubley was weighted, she was around 330 lbs.  About a month ago, she did have her head scanned at this hospital and I'd asked the CT tech if he thought she would fit all the way in this machine and he said yes.  Prior to this, her abdominal scans had to be down at the Richmond Kaiser.  I told Dr. ER this, but she said when they pushed the limit, they have broken ones before.  I asked if she would please check with the current on-duty tech.  She did and he agreed to try.  Then comes the drinking of the yucky bitter stuff - even with the apple juice - it still was yucky.  She had to drink 2 small pictures of the stuff and she did a great job of getting it down - only near the end of the 2nd pitcher, did she start to feel nauseous and her nurse quickly injected some anti-puke drug in her IV. 

At this point, Dr. Internal Medicine guy took over; more going over her history and then another end of life question.  At this point, all Dbubley wanted to do was to stay out of pain, so it was here that she agreed to the DNR.  When she did, Dr. IM said something like "we find that end stage cancer patients don't do very well when we bring them back.  We find when the heart stops, there's a reason . . . "  WAIT, HOLD on - END STAGE CANCER!  And really, with all your education, you find when the heart stops there's a reason - wow, stop the presses, this just in "HEARTS DO NOT STOP FOR NO REASON",  And end stage cancer?  Neither her kidney doc nor her cancer doc had ever uttered any words like this or even any words that would let me read between lines to mean this and believe me, I'm one tenacious "between the line reader" when it comes to talking with medical people.  I think we both decided not to challenge doc IM's words, because it was 3 am and all we wanted/needed from him was the admitting paperwork.  We'd wait for the results from the CT scan before we got too crazy.  Those words "end stage cancer" are extremely scary and we had our moments and tears after he left. 

During all of this, Dbubley had one of the best nurses ever.  Linda was a great mix of comfort, humor, tenderness, concern and pretty speedy with the drugs too.  About 3 am, she asked if I was hunger and brought a sandwich and coffee for me.  After the CT scan (of which she fit just fine, thank you very much), I asked Linda how long she'd been a nurse, because she was so perky and good at it.  She said she'd done her student nurse training at this hospital and in 1975 she started working there.  1975!  This energetic, obviously in love with her job, woman had been a nurse for 34 YEARS!  Either we caught her on a good night or she was one amazing woman.  Considering she'd been called in to do this shift and she'd already been up 24 hours - I going with the amazing label. 

I left at 4:30 am, once the scan was done and they had a room for her.  I'd been up since 6 am, worked a full day and then came home to the above mentioned fun and games - so I was getting a little pooped.  Linda said she'd go up to the room with her, so I knew she'd be okay.  And Dbubley was as out of pain as she'd been since this started, so I finally left.  By the time I got home, Guy was a little hungry - he didn't have a Nurse Linda to bring him anything - so I made him a peanut butter sandwich and we eventually went to bed.  I think I fell asleep around 6 am, making it a full 24 hours of consciousness for me. 

Dbubley called about 10 am this morning.  She didn't get much sleep, but the scan results were back and . . . drum roll please . . . she's constipated!  Yep, even though she had gone on Thursday morning, the scan showed this was the problem.  So it is now official, Dbubley is full of shit - as if any of you who know her had any doubts about this.  Her sodium was also very low and that was a concern.  They think it was because she was trying to drink a lot of water, but she'd not been eating very much.  So they are treating for the sodium deficiency and the little c; we'l leave the big C to her oncologist, okay. 

Well, that's the story girls and boys.  It's been a long ride and if you're still with me, I appreciate it.
 

A year ago today, Gilly (our dog) was still alive. 

A year ago today, Stacy (our friend and attendant) was still alive.

A year ago today, dbubley had 2 kidneys and did not have cancer. 

The last one isn’t entirely true; we didn’t know there was cancer swimming around in her body. 

Gilly died Aug. 29, 2008

Stacy died last February.
Dbubley has cancer and it may be inoperable. 

What will this next year bring?

I'm sure I could make a list of good things that happened this last year, but I'm just not in the mood right now.