Saturday health update

The last three days have not been the greatest healthwise. Thanksgiving Day I thought I was going to have to call off having dinner here. My port site, shoulder and entire left side hurt so badly I had tears in my eyes. So although I hadn't used any in a week, I took Lortab. After a couple of rounds of those I decided I might be functional. DD#2 pretty much took over dinner preparations. She chose linens, dishes, washed dishes, set the table and cooked. All I did was supervise - except for making the dressing. Abbey and Donnie came over around mid-afternoon and they also got into the act. They brought flowers with them. If the three of them had not done dinner, we wouldn't have had our lovely feast. And it really was lovely. Even though all three of them were cooking things they had never made before. Somewhere around 8:00p I crashed.

About 11:30p I woke up to DD#2 being ill and throwing up. That went on for about an hour, off and on.. Mike got up to take care of cleaning and such, so he and I were awake again until 2:00a. I took more pain meds and went back to sleep sitting up on the sofa. (Can't lay down. My shoulder hurts too badly for that.)

Woke up Friday morning, in a lot of pain again. I was supposed to go to the doc first thing, so I didn't take any pain meds before that. The port site was beginning to have some swelling. And I actually HAVE a white count. Went from 0.0 to 0.1. Though it's tiny, it's still an improvement!

Because I'm making white cells again, they are going to the port site to fight that infection. Which causes pain. I'm trying to focus n the bright side here. The port was too bad to use, so I had to have blood drawn through my arm. Then I had to get IV antibiotic. The first stick didn't work. So I had to get stuck a third time. Thank goodness for my iPod and TMI. But mentally, this getting stuck is still very hard for me. It's a failing I am trying to improve. The doc also gave me a new prescription for the hydrocodone at a higher dose and said I could use a heating pad on my shoulder. My heating pad is at the farm, naturally, so Sally went by Walgreens and got me a new one.

We got back home to find DD#2 awake and much improved. She thinks she just ate too much. Something that can happen to the best of us on Turkey Day. Most of yesterday I slept sitting up on the sofa. Woke up long enough to eat dinner with Mike (which he prepared). Then I wound up sleeping sitting up most of the night. I will be glad when I can sleep in my bed again. It's much more conducive to sleeping than the sofa.

This morning I woke up about 7:00 and my temp was 99.7°. I will be watching it and if it hits 100° I have to call my doc. I've taken a pain pill so I can move around some. Mike and DD#2 are planning to get all the Christmas things down from the attic today, but we are not going to do much decorating until next weekend. I want to wait until the housekeeper has been here and cleaned well. It's hard enough dusting around the dish collection.

The bottom line here is that my white count is up and that is good. And I can take Lortab or Lorcet until my shoulder gets less painful and the infection goes away. I'm going to go with the glass is half full. Monday I will have to get platelets and likely more IV antibiotic, so I am hoping the port will be well enough to use by then.