A rough week

 Mike had been doing so well.  No ER for 2 months!  

And then Thursday, the cystoscopy.  This investigates the inside of the bladder and disturbs the internal situation so that Mike experiences significant pain thereafter.  Complications took us to emergency 2 times and ultimately into the hospital.

We had been developing a routine and Mike was feeling pretty good.  I was able to spend a week in Belize and that went well. 

 I had been invited to Darwin in Australia, and was set when Mike's health changed dramatically.  With long talks with Dr. Baird, a wonderful, sensitive individual, she convinced me that nothing would benefit by my staying in California and encouraged me to have confidence in the hospital and that he was in the best place he could be.  

After 5 days, he was walking on his own and Maria was able to bring him home. 

Mike at the front door, entering after his stint in the hospital!

I am in Australia now and Mike is home!  He is resuming his routine of walks and mail.  We are setting up physical therapy for conditioning and looking to a resumption of healthy balance for life. 

He reads the paper in the morning with breakfast, though the hyperbaric therapy has made him use a magnifying glass to read! 



He is continuing walks and get the mail.   Life is moving forward again.

     


I am in Perth now and will be in Darwin tomorrow. I am staying with a former geospatial engineering student now working in Perth and will visit with volcanologist Axel Schmit at Curtin University, who has been working with the zircons in the v ash in my Late Classic ceramics.

I spent time at the local museum and also at the botanical garden and learning of the Western Australian flora and its unusual adaptations! We had overcast sun and rain in this WA winter.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Background....

Image
The Background....   Mike was diagnosed with bladder cancer on his birthday, May 2nd of last year. We had been planning a camping trip in our wonderful VW Vanagon and had got it all ready to go when this news came. This certainly changed our plans.  There were 2 surgeries in anticipation of 8.5 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy that initiated in September and completed in mid-October. Overlapping the treatments were trips to ER and most initiated hospitalizations. On one occasion, he was in ICU for 4 days. This was rough.  There had been more ER and hospitalizations than months since his treatments. The infections and sepsis, bleeding bladder all have made us frequent visitors to ER, familiar with the team there and on the hospital floor. Both Mike and I are grateful to the staff and have been reassured that we are not abusing the system.  Most recently, Mike was in for a major infection for 5 days, and we got out for only a week and a half. Mike went back to ...
Read more

Mike is getting visitors!

Image
  Mike is getting visitors!  And he is enjoying the conversations and the change from the daily effort of getting well!  Short walks, loads of water, and rest. Rob and Allison shared lunch last Thursday, and they talked of art and Santa Cruz Island. Today, Michael and Phillip spent time with subjects all over the place...  Sunburst Farms (remember?), Dia de Sta Cruz (need to pay for that), and yes, we slipped a little into that subject that need not be named! Mike with Michael, Phillip, and Kitty who was making herself a nuisance!
Read more