Second Half of Recovery Week

Reinforcements in the take care of Greg campaign arrived at 3pm Tuesday. Mom and Gene were coming in to replace Tondi. So they arrived and we all said our hellos.
Gene had a nice surprise for me. I had shaved my head to the 1/8 inch level. Well he, out of an act of solidarity had gotten the same haircut, to support me. He said if Greg can do it so can I. So that was real nice to not have to be the only one waking around like a marine recruit on day one at Paris Island.
I had a little more strength that day and I actually stayed awake (still locked on the couch no doubt) and talked most of the afternoon with all of them. Tondi ended up staying another full day to visit with all of us.
Mom was of course the eager beaver to help in any way she could. Constantly getting me a wet rag for my forehead and chasing me around with pillows to try to fluff behind me. One of my most comfortable positions is actually leaning forward with my head in my hands, elbows propped on knees. This releases all the stomach muscle tension and relaxes everything that can be relaxed in there. Even in this position she was determined to find a way to get a pillow involved to help me out. There is really no where for the pillow to go so I just asked her to keep it on hold for when I needed to lay back. This seemed to be enough to make her happy with the pillow patrol.
Gene kept himself busy by doing daily walks through the neighborhood and going out to buy a paper to read each morning. He normally had the paper done by the time anybody else was awake. He is a real early riser and likes to attack the day. He wanted in the worst way to go mow the lawn for us, but I told him that we had someone coming to do it in the next few days. It was all I could do to restrain him from doing it anyway. He has this crazy desire to cut grass, and saw the need. In must have been driving him batty, like an itch you can’t scratch.
Mom was able to entertain herself most of the time by keeping up with all her email buddies despite telling them not to send her any mail during the time she was going to be here, so that it did not stack up upon her return. But she is like a drug addict with the computer and got on just to check how far she was getting behind in mails and just had to take care of them.
Here she is talking to herself in the office, about all these mails that she should not be getting. But actually has a great time responding to.
Ricky and a toy are keeping her company.

There is nothing like a mothers touch when you don’t feel good. So it was a real joy having her come to take care of me (and Gene too of course). I have my moods, and probably take them out more on her than anyone else, but she understands and continues to provide great support. This is probably due to do some emotional release of having the person you trust the most in life there to take your guard down, some big maternal Freudian thing with reverting back to a child hood stage especially heightened during sickness, fear and pain. (Sounds like I looked that up or something, but it is just my lame shot at psycho analysis.) So I have to apoligize for any such outbursts or behavior in that vein. Nothing was intended to hurt my mother. I Love her dearly, as she does me.
She was constantly asking what she can get for me and was on call 24 hours a day, food, drink, medicine, another pillow, more wet rags. I really lost the weight this week, and we were all trying to get as much food in as possible. I just had no desire to eat.
She kept bringing me little dishes of fresh fruit despite my rejection of the offer of food. Gene would sneak out in the mornings and buy fresh fruit during his paper run. I was unable to refuse the fruit once it was sitting there in front of me. So that helped. I had a constant fruit flow most of the days.
Actual meals were a much harder thing to get me interested in. Between not feeling good, no appetite, and all the mouth and taste bud side effects, a sandwich or pasta or anything with any girth to it, just looked impossible to eat.
We did venture out to the grocery store on Wednesday, I needed about 4 things which we quickly got, and I thought this is easy I am home free. Then we got to the checkout counter. Complete log jam. How in the world at 2 in the afternoon are there 30 people in the grocery store, much less all 30 of those people waiting at the 2 checkout lanes that are open. So I was pretty tired from walking trough the store, but the line was gonna kill me. Luckily we had grabbed a cart on the way in, so I had something to lean on. Now I had not been on my feet for more than 3 mins since Saturday, so after 15 mins in line to ring up my cream of mushroom soup, red grapes, box of cereal and cottage cheese, I was friggin whipped. I was asleep before we got out of the parking lot, with my face pushed up against the window glass. So much for my assimilation back into functioning society.
When we got home from the grocery store all was going well, Tondi was still with us. I took a nap or something then got up and had a real bad pain spell. I do not think any of them had seen one up close before from me and had only heard me talk about this. Well it aint pretty and I think it scared the hell out of them.
It was mostly gas pain related, which sounds like no big deal, but when you consider that I have a rewired stomach and tubes that used to go out, go in, and tubes that used to go up go down, and some tubes don’t go anywhere at all. Gas can become a major problem. It had me on my knees in the middle of the floor crying. It is times like this that you consider actually getting a knife and cutting your stomach to get the air out for relief. I feel like I am literally going to explode from the rib cage down. It passed after a short while that felt like an eternity. But it comes back in waves until it gets evacuated either up or down, or medicated in some way.
This happened a few times and after these sessions of rolling on the floor swearing a blue streak they began to accept that there was nothing they could do to help. Just be supportive and get me medicines I ask for and such. It must be a helpless feeling to see someone writhing like that and not be able to do a thing about it. I know it sure sucks from my end.

By the end of the week I felt strong enough to sit outside a while and stayed awake pretty all day each day of the weekend. We spent some fun time out on the deck listening to music and brushing the dogs. Even did some light chores to try to get ready for Cindy’s return. I hate to have her come home to any mess.
Early Sunday I enticed Gene to take me to McDonalds to get some breakfast. Mom was not up yet, so the boys went out by themselves. I normally would not eat here and neither would he, but I turned him onto their hotcake plate. For under 2 bucks you get 3 pancakes butter and syrup, and though you can tell they are pre-made, (not poured from batter this morning) they are pretty good. So we rushed home with them and stuffed our faces with pancakes that I could almost taste some of (taste buds slowly returning to life).
We had one more excursion adventure that week. I wanted to do the simple task of getting some fresh cut flowers for Cindy coming home after her 7 day trip. Sounds easy enough. So Gene drives, I ride shotgun and mom in the back, we head off to the nearest Super store which has got to have flowers, right. Wrong. Long story short, 5 stops to get flowers, the ones we got ended up looking crappy and not only that, they rang up for $2 more than they should have. We were out of time and I was more than out of energy and patience, so we took our crappy little bouquet paid the extra $2 and went home just in time to beat her plane in. So thanks to them for carting me around all of creation on my ridiculous fool’s errand of trying to get a simple thing like flowers on a Sunday afternoon in Charleston.
They stayed until just after Cindy got home, enough time to say hi then head back home to more comfortable surroundings. I know they were anxious to get home and get their puppies sprung from doggie jail.
Huge thanks to both Mom and Gene for the sacrifice of spending all that time down here taking care of me and the dogs. Once again I could not have done it without them. It was good for them to see how bad the recovery actually was so they do not have to imagine. Sometimes your imagination can be much worse than reality. So they know what to expect and do not need to be afraid of the unknown and what I am going through.
If they come again they know what to expect, if they don’t, they know what they are missing. A rip roaring good time.
Actually we did have a good time during my little pockets of relief that come later in the day, caught up on some movies, stayed up later than we should have talking, played with the dogs a little. Just having someone there to help let the dogs in and out all day is a great relief, also having someone to chase them back in the house when they are out barking at walkers or landscapers or anybody is great.
Thanks again for all the Love from Mom, Gene and Tondi for looking out for me during that first recovery week.
That’s all I can muster up the energy to write about now.
More stories of fun and frivolity at the Hill house to come soon!