First Half of Recovery Week

So let me drill down a little bit on the details of the recovery week as it was a real monster.Cindy left for the airport at 9 AM Sunday and it killed her to do it. I was not doing good at all, but she had to go and we had Tondi arranged to come and be with me later that day, so it was OK.Tondi is my youngest sister and lives just north of Charlotte, so it is about a 4 to 5 hour drive for her to get here. She arrived sometime in the afternoon, and I had been sleeping all day, I just got up when she got here.I do not know at what level she expected me to be at when she was coming to take care of me, but I think it surprised her how weak and depleted I was. She played nurse pretty much for thefirst couple of days.

So let me introduce my closest aged sibling. She stopped aging at 29 some years ago, and I kept going, but we are still the closest in age. My happy go lucky, ever smiling sister. Tondi Campbell. Pictured above. She would love it if you would notice her, Stanley Cup Winners, Carolina Hurricanes T-Shirt, which she is proudly displaying. (Stock Photo.) Her husband Jeff (who is a hell of a nice guy too), and her, run their ownconstruction company, Check out their website here: www.campbellscarpentry.com/



She made me great food, and pretty much just left me alone to sleep, which was perfect. She learned what to do to take care of the dogs right away on the first pass. Knew how to keep them quiet and out of my hair. (They normally are when I am not feeling good, but the excitement of having a visitor staying there kind of made them more antsy than normal, they wanted to play with her constantly.)



She learned where everything in the kitchen was by herself, she would bring me stuff that I knew required a special tool for instance and I asked her how she knew where to find it, and she said that the kitchen was laid out just like she would have done it. I did not even know we owned some of that stuff, but she found it and put it to use.



She would bring me plates of food at just the right time without me even asking for anything. It just seemed like I did not know I was hungry for anything and she would walk over to me and plunk down something on the table, I would wake up and open my eyes and there would be not only great food, but exactly what I wanted, even though I did not know I was hungry, or that I wanted it. One huge drawback to having someone there who can cook during this process is that the first thing to be effected by the chemo medicine is your mouth. At least it was in my case. I had mouth sores, all around my cheeks and the inside of my lips. Had a sore throat. My tongue felt like it had been scalded by hot soup or tea, and was just numb for well over a week. My tongue had some really enlarged taste buds, like ten or so, the size of sesame seeds scattered over the surface. They were very sore and irritable, (just like the rest of me). So I really got cheated out of the great food I was eating. I could barely taste anything.



On Wednesday I stepped way out of the norm and had an IBC root beer, which I love. It just tasted like carbonated water. I got no root beer flavor at all out of it. How frustrating.



One day she made me a Peggy Special, which is one of my all time favorite dishes. If you are a member of the family you know exactly what this is, for those of you that are not, allow me to let you in on the secret. Our family (other than Tondi) has not historically been known for their culinary skills. It was a joke growing up that our mom could burn cold cereal. Peggy is my grandmother’s name. She used to make a simple scrambled egg and cheese sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise, and she called it a “Peggy Special”. It was her specialty. Such was our limited exposure to the culinary arts that this sandwich just impressed the hell out of all us kids. So we asked for it by name every time we went to visit our grandmother.



Anyway, long story short Tondi made me one of these, which is quite the rare treat for me since Cindy will not allow an egg to even be in the house under her watch. (Dietary, my digestion challenges, and attempt at transition to Vegan living being the reasons.) It was fantastic of course.



To give you an example of cooking in our family, I was the only kid on the playground with a cream cheese and olive sandwich for lunch. This is exactly what it sounds like. Cream cheese on bread with about 6 olives jammed in equidistant from each other. Never seemed weird to me until I got older and realized nobody other than us had ever heard of or could possibly imagine such a thing as a cream cheese and olive sandwich.



Enough of that craziness, back to the “meat” (pardon the pun) of the story, the medical stuff. I was so weak, that in the mornings I would get dressed in new PJ’s from the night before and then have to rest for 20 mins in bed from the exertion of getting dressed. Then I would come downstairs to collapse on the couch for the day. It would literally take me about 4 mins to get down the stairs. (Glad it was down and not up.) I would take each stair one leg at a time then bring the next leg down to the same step. Having to rest leaning my full weight on the banister between the monumental task of taking on the next step. I was moving like a 120 year old man. The weakness was unbelievable it really was difficult to stand at all. I had dizziness, terrible headaches, spots before my eyes, and of course elevated above normal abdominal and chest pain. Just another day in paradise.



I ran a fever each day and was taking Advil and Oxycontin like it was going out of style. I pretty much slept 20 hours a day. Not as if I had any choice. I did not have the energy to keep my eyes open. If Tondi had not been there forcing me to drink, keeping me hydrated and making me eat, I do not know what would have happened. To add to the excitement, through all this I still had diarrhea. So my waking moments were spent just dealing with getting food and water in and other stuff out, of my body, in whatever manner I could. There were long periods of time during Sunday, Monday and Tuesday that I literally did not have the energy to lift my head off the pillow.



There was very little talk going on with Tondi and I feel like a terrible host. She must have had the most boring time. She just sat on the other couch for days and watched TV while I slept, waiting to do something for me. It must have been miserable for her.



But I can’t thank her enough for all her help. It was very much appreciated and needed. She stayed until Thursday, overlapping a day with my Mom and Gene.



Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were by far my worst days, in a long time; probably bordering on my later recovery days at John Hopkins after my original huge surgery 4 years ago. Wednesday I could at least walk around the house a little bit we even ventured out to the grocery store for a few mins. I was going stir crazy and needed a change of scenery.



But I will have to leave that for the next installment. We are getting into the Mom and Gene chapter and that deserves its own posting.

THANKS TONDI, YOU WERE WONDERFUL and I LOVE YOU.