Judie’s Gear Diary – 2002-09-28

This has been a complete roller-coaster of a week. On Wednesday I took my husband to the ER, and he was immediately admitted after a ctscan showed an unidentifiable mass in his lower abdomen. What has ensued has been a steady system of ups and downs. Down when the doctor kept dropping words like “possible malignant tumor” and up when he mentioned “could be a horribly infected and encapsulated appendix”; down when we were told blood would be sent to the Mayo clinic for a “cancer marker test,” and up when the test came back negative (though as I understand it, that is still not 100% reliable); down when we found out the hard way that he was allergic to morphine, and up when they took him off the IV demerol drip and he was able to take loritab by mouth (the loritab seems to control his pain better). Today was the first day that he has felt like sitting up and doing anything. How did we spend it? When we weren't watching his beloved Gators beat the University of Kentucky, we were enjoying one of our favorite games that we play together: Scrabble. Being able to whip out my Pocket PC when he said he wished we could play Scrabble together was definitely one of those times when I was so thankful that I have this “job”, and I was also able to marvel at how things work out. Kathleen with Handmark had just sent Julie and me this game on Monday, and I had loaded it but not yet tried it out. Today we gave it a workout and I can honestly say that it is fun and very handy to have available in such a portable form. Hopefully by this coming Monday we will have more information about when they will operate on Steve. If you all could keep him in your thoughts I would appreciate it…