The Climb

Everything is going good and still on track for me to go home on Monday.  My body is healing and recovering beautifully and my breathing continues to get stronger.  I had a little scare Thursday, but it turned out to be nothing.

Last night I was on the computer and I was noticing how bloated my stomach was.  It had been like this for a couple days.  It is extended so much that my belly button looks like it is squished closed.  The last day or two it has gotten a little worse.  I don’t like it, but I am not worried about it. I know eventually it will go down.  A few different reasons why I am not too worried about this.

1. I am eating a lot.  My body has not seen food like this in a long time and is not use to it.  I still have CF and digestion is still affected.  I had the doctors do a test on me to see how much fat I am losing in my stool so we can try and figure out where I am with enzymes.  The test came back that I am losing fat so enzymes are necessary.  With the amount of eating I am doing I need to take more enzymes. 
2. I know my stomach is stretching out because when I eat I can feel it.  I don’t know how to explain it.  It is a feeling like it is full.  My stomach is popping out and I can feel the discomfort like I ate too much, but I can’t stop eating.  I still feel hungry even though it feels like there is no more room for anymore to go.  So I know it will go down when my eating settles down.
3. Parts of my body become bloated here and there, especially after that large dose of Prednisone.  I am done with the IV’s now, but I am still on quite a bit of oral.  Steroids have to be weaned down so I am slowly going back down to my regular 20 mg a day. 

So like I was saying I was noticing how bloated my stomach was.  My abdomen was popping out right where my belly button is.  It was popped out quite a bit allowing me to cup the bottom of my stomach in my hand.  I pushed it in a little bit and noticed that underneath my belly button there was a black and blue mark that was not pretty at all.  This of course was all happening around 7:00 at night so all the doctors were gone.  I figured I would tell my nurse about it and then have a doctor look at it the next morning.  I told Erika and Jason about it and of course they both got nervous and did not want me to wait until the next morning.   Erika was afraid it was pancreatitis.  She said the mark was characteristic of it so I searched online.   I saw the look of some of these people’s black and blue marks which some did look like mine, but I was not having any pain at all.  I still did what they told me to do and asked for the doctor on call to come and see me.  They had a resident come up and he was not worried about it at all.  He told me that since I was not having pain he would leave a note for my doctor.  He would have them look at it and take some blood work to make sure my pancreas was fine.  Erika and Jason were not satisfied at all.   They wanted it to be looked at and blood checked right away.  I understood why they were freaking out.  I mean with everything that has happened to me these last few weeks I didn’t blame them, but I yelled at Erika for getting me all worked up about something that I wasn’t even worried about until I mentioned it to her.  The resident obviously wasn’t worried about at all either.  She apologized to me and told me that she just loved me and wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.  I told her I understood and I would escalate this whole issue to my doctors, but I wasn’t going to push it anymore tonight with the resident

This morning they took some extra blood to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with my pancreas.  Like promised I talked to my PA and she wanted an ultrasound just to make sure there was no bleeding.  The general consensus was that some capillaries broke due to all the rehab I have been doing.  I am doing a lot of exercises using my core so it is a big possibility.  Just to be sure that it is just small capillaries and nothing else they are sending me down for an ultrasound tomorrow.  I am relaxed about it, because everyone else really doesn’t think anything is going on.  They are doing the tests to be sure, but no one is really concerned.  I am happy they are doing the tests, especially because I am going home Monday.  I want everything to be good before I go.

PT has been going great.  My left shoulder is not hurting at all anymore.  I had one day where I had no pain at all.  Then of course my right shoulder started hurting, but nowhere near as bad as the left one did.  My PT is amazed with how I progressed in my exercises.  I can do most of them without her assisting my legs and I am doing them much faster.  My transfers to and from my wheelchair are much smoother than when I first started and I am using my legs more and my arms less.  I am now using a regular walker instead of the platform walker and even more awesome is I was able to walk one hundred feet with it today.

OT has been exciting too.  I have done so many things this week alone.  I am able to dry my hair with a towel, brush it and completely blow dry all on my own.  I put pillow cases on some pillows.  I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it was actually a little more work than you would think.  It’s crazy how something so simple was actually difficult and therapeutic.  I have been putting my own shoes back on.  I am doing a lot more standing.  I was able to take all the pieces out of the Operation guy with having to sit only once.  I then stood up again and put all the pieces back in while standing the whole time.  Another day I was able to get through my whole deck of cards while playing war.  I didn’t have to hold on to the table either.  I played bowling on the Wii and I would do every frame standing and I would sit between turns.  At the beginning of all this, I was barely able to stand.  When I would transfer I would use my upper body a lot so I would not have to put too much pressure on my legs.  I would only be “standing” for a second.  My strength and stamina have increased so much and continue to do so.  Yesterday I was able to go down to the cafeteria with my OT and we got some food.  It was so nice to be able to get out of the room, off of floor eight and see some different scenery.  I of course wore my mask while down there. That is something I am going to have to do for awhile whenever I am around people and something I will always have to do when I go into a hospital.  Just a few more days and I will be going outside for the first time since July 6th.