Nearing the end of the first week

Well, we’re nearing the end of the first week of Kerrie’s hospital stay.   I keep telling her to think of it like summer camp: They wake you up really early in the morning, feed you, make you go out and do excercises, then after lunch you get to do arts and crafts, take a nap, then on to dinner.. after dinner you write letters home and then it’s time for bed 🙂

 It’s not quite as simple as that, but we are getting into a routine.

The staff comes in, around 6:00am, and takes her vitals signs. They do any needed bloodwork, talk to her for a while and then let her go back to sleep. By 7:30am they come with her breakfast, I nag her about getting out of bed and then we take a walk around the floor. She has to walk several times a day, but sometimes she is just too tired to do this. They tell her even if she only walks 50 feet she still needs to do it, but she’s been pretty good about doing 4 or 5 laps around her floor before she’s too tired to go any further.  Right now she’s doing this 3 or 4 times a day, but I am sure this will lessen the more the chemo kicks in. I have to give her credit… it has to be a pain in the neck to put on the face mask, walk out of her room and push around a huge IV cart while she walks around. There were several other patients taking their walks at the same time as us this morning and I suggested we have IV Cart races.. or IV olympics or something like that. Kerrie was the only one who found it funny.. a few more days and she probably won’t either.

The doctors usually do their rounds, then the social worker comes in, the dietician visits and so does the nurse practicioner. In between all this, the nursing staff is constantly coming in to change her IV’s and see how she is.  Then lunch arrives.

After lunch we take another walk, watch a little tv or play a board game, then the nurses are back for more IV’s.. more blood transfusions… more chemo.. another little walk and then it’s time for dinner.

If she’s up to it, we’ve been walking after dinner.. but by this time she usually needs to lay down. She’s been trying to sit in a chair, as much as she can, because she knows before too long she will not even feel like getting out of the bed… I will be there to nag her, as much as possible about this 🙂

Of course, then they are back with more bags for her IV’s, checking her vital signs, etc. This almost seems to never stop. Even after we’ve gone to bed they are in there routinely. Usually around midnight, then 3:00am and then it all starts over again around 6:00am.

Will all this stuff going on, people calling, people visiting and all the “work” we still need to do on insurance, fundraising, filing for all the assistance that she will need, etc. it’s amazing to me that anyone gets any rest when they are in a hospital. I don’t think I’ve been this tired when I’ve put in 100 hours at work . I can only imagine how Kerrie is feeling.

The week can pretty much been summed up like this: We’ve spent a lot of time walking, making necessary phone calls, returning her personal phone calls, getting info to fill out all the paperwork she needs and working on the information we need to make sure we do fundraising legally. Between this and the doctors/nurses coming in every half hour the days have been pretty busy and tiring.

So far she stills seems normal, just tired and feeling sick some of the time. We’ve been warned that by today or tomorrow she would feel more sick than not… we’ll see what happens.

She still doesn’t have internet in her room, so I’ve been printing everything out to show it to her. Hopefully, she will have it by Monday and will be able to start posting on here herself, when she feels up to it, and at least being able to read all your messages.

Keep them coming! You should see how her face lights up when I show them to her.

More later..

 Jenn