Playing Chicken

Faina enjoyed a basket I brought home from last night's Religious School Committee meeting. Everyone had pitched in and obviously people have been reading this blog. The choice of a DVD of "I Love Lucy" was beyond brilliant. I have long appreciated how my darling wife is a combination of the naturalized citizen-uniquely talented-bandleader Ricky and the vivacious-adventurous-live-for-the-moment Lucy.

It was a good cap on an interesting day. First thing in the morning, after a miserable weekend, Faina called Dr. K's office. Their answer was, where have you been, you have a 9:00 appointment. Actually, the appointment had been cancelled last week, just someone had failed to delete it from the schedule. That aside, there was an opening at 9:30, so the question became can you get here by then, so it was hustle out the door. The appointment was a touch on the surreal side. Dr. K said that the problem was likely a kink in the intestines, something not unusual for someone who had undergone several surgeries in the abdominal cavity. He said to stick to a clear liquid diet for the next few days and the next cycle of chemo would be postponed to the following week. Then somewhat spontaneously, with some concern for dehydration, Dr. K recommended Faina get a two liter infusion of saline solution, with an antacid chaser. At the rate of a drip, that meant an unplanned three hours of drip, drip, drip. This led to thoughts on my part of: the Chinese Water Torture (apologies if there is a more PC phrasing of that cliche), the books I habitually keep in my car-but we had taken Faina's, the fully charged laptop sitting by my desk, the NYT languishing in our driveway, and appreciation for my Crackberry. At about 1:00 we get home and Marianne, the home health care nurse, is waiting, having arrived a little early, and wondering to where we had disappeared.

Next up was a series of phone calls.

First an idea inspired by a seeming inability on the part of Hopkins to test tissue samples for HER2 positive status: We called Dr. H, the gastroenterologist who performed the endoscopy, at Faina's urging, that discovered the gastric cancer 20 months ago. His administrator said that he was away on vacation and would get back to us, meanwhile they will check to see if they still have a tissue sample.

Then Faina connected with her worldwide network of physician friends. Dr. I, in the Netherlands, was aghast at the lack of aggressive treatment for the inflamed colon or the blocked intestines. She cautioned that a rupture and peritonitis would complicate everything else with which we are dealing.

The next physician conversation was with Dr. K who said that he recommended we speak with a gastroenterologist. Neither of us heard him offer that advice at that morning's appointment. Whatever! Well, our original gastroman is away, so we called Dr. K's recommendation, Dr. M who as luck would have it is also on vacation; perhaps she is with Dr. H. So, knowing that time really is of the essence, we took the first appointment we could get, with an associate, on Thursday.

When I got home from the RSC meeting, it was time to feed Faina, or more accurately, to set up her intravenous nutrition. After adding the vitamins, setting up the pump ... I go to flush her PICC line and it is completely blocked. I even switch out the "positive pressure valve" and still no success. I finally go to the alternative line and that works. Yay! It wasn't panic time, but with no other source of nutrition, getting the TPN started was not unimportant.

And there was evening and there was morning, another day.