Thursday

A day of visitors and juggling cars to elude the street-sweeping-parking-ticket Gestapo or what is known as our typical Thursday.

Satomi had a decent day although not quite as good as yesterday.  Today was Day-3 of her Fentanyl patch and the medication dosage starts to drop off.  Day-3 is typically the day that she’s the most lucid but also in the most pain.  She had a few “minor” headaches and back aches and neck aches and joint aches.  I think you get the picture.

In the afternoon, I swapped out her patches. She has to roll over to change them so it’s never pleasant.  There are always moans of pain and all her bones creak.  She’s almost a skeleton under all that floppy skin.  Her pain control should return in a few hours.

We are also monitoring her temperature now.  The other day, her temperature was 101.2°F.  The RN attributed it to three blankets in the middle of the day.  Hmmm-I guess that makes sense.  I did see a little bit of sweat on her brow.  After a bit of experimentation, we found that if we cut back to only one blanket during the daytime, her temperature is spot-on.

Food intake was typical-a cup of apple sauce, a smashed banana, several ounces of juice and water.  Nothing usual to report except that we hear her stomach more now.  It seems to be bubbling or growling whenever we give her anything.  The RN took this positively as it’s a sign that her bowels are still working.  I take it as a sign that she may barf at any moment.

Our friend, Tina Yang, came over and treated Satomi using acupuncture.  She’s done this many time before and Satomi likes it.  This time though, there were no needles.  The last few visits ended with Satomi falling asleep and unconsciously pulling out the needles.  As you can imagine, this was bad.  This time, Tina used magnets on specific acupressure points.  Take a look at Tina’s website for more information (http://coastalacupuncturectr.com/about.html).  I am strongly considering acupuncture to treat my chronic headaches.

Pastor Nancy also joined us.  It’s been a couple of weeks since she’s been here and she noticed the changes in Satomi’s condition.  She tells me that she reads this blog on occasion (“Hi Nancy!”).  Maybe I shouldn’t cuss so much; Just kidding-I know that I’m not fooling anyone.

Satomi was a bit restless at bedtime-nothing significant but just very alert.  Besides her new normal reduced medications, I added back in a half-tablet of Ambien.  She was sleeping by 9:00pm and continued to do so all night.