Monday, January 8th

Mom spent the entire day with Kerrie today. Not a good day for her. She’s been suffering from a lot of nausea lately and the are trying to figure out just what is causing it.

It seems to happen a lot when they are giving her meds, etc. through her feeding tube… but this doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Without giving a complete lesson in the anatomy of a bariatric patient… Kerrie basically has two parts to her stomache.. the part she actually uses when she eats ( and is connected to her asophogus) and the part that has been sectioned off by her surgery ( but still connected to the bowels).

Because she can only hold about 4 ounces of food when she eats, the feeding tube was placed in the part of her stomache that was sectioned off. In other words.. if they put a lot of stuff in there it shouldn’t make her “sick to her stomache” and make her feel like she is going to throw it up.. but, this seems to be what’s happening.

Of course, Kerrie has been the exception to EVERY rule that ever existed in the medical profession.. so maybe she will, once again, prove to be a “strange but true” case.

To see if they can figure out what kind of problems may be going on, they are going to do an x-ray of her stomache area tomorrow. If I am getting all this information wrong, Mom will be sure to correct me 🙂

They are also going to, finally, do the liver biopsy tomorrow morning. There are several problems that could occur with the liver, due to the bone marrow transplant, so they want to check it out. They had talked about doing this several times.. but always cancelled it for one reason or another. It looks like tomorrow is the day.

On a good note, it looks as if the Bone Marrow Biopsy may not be necessary. One was done right before she was sent to NOMC ( I didn’t know this, Mom had forgotten and I guess one of the other doctors had too)… everything looked great at that time.

According to the doctor who did the biopsy, and reminded Mom of it today, the previous biopsy showed the bone marrow had almost completely “switched over” which means.. Kerrie.. as much as you don’t want to, your blood type is going to change very soon or may have already. Look on the bright side… Your going to get an A+ without even having to study ( and it’s probably the only one I have ever received outside of my music classes). Mom’s going to check, next time they to a Type-Test to see if she has switched yet.

As much as we want her back in Rehab, it looks like she will be staying put this week. Maybe she’ll suprise us, but I wouldn’t expect her back at NOMC right now.

Mom’s going to call me, right after the liver biopsy, to let me know how things went and I will be sure to update as soon as I hear from her.

I’ve received quite a few orders, for K.A.S.T. T-shirts, in the last few days and want to let those people know that I will not be able to mail your shirts out until I return from my trip. I’m shooting for getting them in the mail by Janaury 21st. As much as I would like to, I just don’t see how I can make it to the post office in the next two days. Please accept my apology and thanks for your patience.

A quick note to all the people who have e-mailed me on my AOL account and KAST account in the last few days… with the amount of pressure and stress I am under to get my work done before my recruiting trip, it is just NOT possible for me to answer my e-mails right now. I apologize for this, but want to make sure you don’t think I am just ignoring anyone…. to the few of you who actually put “read when you have time” in the subject line of your e-mail.. please make note: I usually “have time” the second or third week of November ( but I read them now anyway 🙂 )

And to those people who feel the URGENT need to send out mass E-mail forwards.. Please…
Bill Gates is not tracking e-mails

Victoria’s secret is not going to send me a free gift card for sending e-mails to ten of my friends

Adding my name to an e-mail is not a real science project

My phone is not going to ring in the next 10 minutes if I forward your mail to 10 other people who don’t have time to read it
Nothing bad is going to happen to me if I don’t forward your mail
Outback steakhouse is not going to donate 5 cents to the treatment of e-mail stupidity for every 15 people I forward your e-mail to..

If I DO actually read your e-mail and DO actually forward it on to 10 people in five minutes or less I am NOT going to “see why” as soon as I am done

In other words… If it’s not going to make me fall out of my chair, grabbing my sides due to the pain the laughter is causing me..and is not worth COMPLETELY stopping my entire life just to read it.. please.. don’t bother to send it. My delete button is getting tired and my trash can is full ( OK.. there’s my useless public service announcement for the day) 🙂