Not Today

We think that mrguy will be released tomorrow. Yay!

In the spirit of full disclosure, he had a crazy poo this morning and because he had the crazy poo the nurses said that they wanted to have him produce another one so they could test it for bugs.

This has happened to him more than once while hospitalized, and with the same result. He had been crapping his little heart out and they wanted to make sure that he didn't have an infection prior to his doing chemo, so they admitted him and tested the poo for every bug I've ever heard of. 

As in that case, when mrguy finally produced his poo after lunch today they took one look at it and pronounced it magnificent. It was of such fine shape and consistency that they could eyeball it and tell that he was not ill.

I think it was too late in the day for them to release him, so he comes home tomorrow.

May his colloidal waste continue to be firm.

Two Months

This is the information I sent to friends and family. To it I will add the following:
He had a lumbar tap which confirmed high brain pressure. They're changing up the blood thinners and trying to figure out which ones work best. He thought he was going home today but had some unexpected poop accident and now they want to test his poop for bugs. So I think I am going to have lunch with my sister instead of picking him up. He's bummed. 

Happy 2 Month Illness-aversary!

 

Summary (cause this will be a long one)

Mrguy is back in the hospital getting some stuff checked out. I am home with the kitties. It's all good.

 

Detail

Papilledema

Last week we learned about the eye problem Pappiledema (see below or you may google), which is caused by pressure in the brain. We went to the hospital for a head MRI on Tuesday evening at the request of our neurologist, and he called yesterday to kindly ask us to go to the ER  because mrguy has a small blood clot in his brain. So we drove to the hospital again. It was a gorgeous day, a gorgeous drive. We are trying to stay positive.

 

What Now?

Doctors of various disciplines are trying to figure out how to treat the clot and the underlying problem, which may be that the anticoagulant he's on might not be working as effectively as it needs to. This, in turn, may be causing the eye problems because the clot could be leaning on an important vessel. Anyhoo, he had a whole room of neurologists looking at him at one point today (students, doctors).

 

What's Good About It?

On the plus side, we're glad that we went to the ER at the hospital because he has had a lot of attention from doctors of all disciplines: neurology, hematology, oncology. All of the ologies! And that this clot was found through testing and not a stroke. Right? He'll probably be in the hospital for the next few days. In the meantime he is being seen by all.

 

Lumbar Tap

Later today they are going to do a lumbar tap (aka spinal tap). They'll take a needle into his spine and draw out some fluid. This will (hopefully) allow them to reduce some intracranial pressure (eye happiness!) and test the pressure of the fluid, which might give them some answers about what to do next.

 

Clotting

And also in the meantime they're trying to figure out which anticoagulant is doing the best job, and how his blood is clotting. I had no idea that you could test how quickly your blood coagulates. Weird.

 

His chemo is postponed until we figure this out.

God Laughed

So you know -- the last time I sent out good news there was an immediate change of situation. 

And we repeated that this morning. We were all excited about going to get chemo and how good mrguy is feeling, and how we're getting our bearings in this journey. And we were almost at our local clinic to get our labs for chemo tomorrow when the neurologist called to say that mrguy has "more" blood clots in his brain. Good news is that you want to hear this from a doctor and not because you had a stroke. 

After not getting the labs, we came home, set up the cats' meds and I made a video showing the precious family where all the cat stuff is becuase they might be their servers tonight. Then we grabbed our capture bag, etc. and got back in the car.

On the upside it was a beautiful drive. I got to spend time with mrguy. I brought some food so I don't starve...and a longer computer cord.

We came to the ER, and are getting tests. Hopefully they'll figure out what's going on with his brain and we'll deal with it and move on again. The only side effect he's having is the blurred vision that took us to the opthalmologist last week.

Genealogy Updates

After several months of waiting, the German genealogist got back to me. I am trying to determine the parents of my 5th great grandmother, who has an uncommon last name. I would really like to be able to tie her to Ferdinand Christian Touchy, but despite my research on him and his known descendants I can find no connection.

In the meantime, we have had no hospitalizations this past week, and mrguy is feeling much better and I've had time for a little genealogy and other puttering myself. I bought an Ikea shelving unit for the laundry room as a place to store extra cat food, cat litter, Ensure, and canned goods. It feels fantastic to get all of that stuff out of bins on the floor.

Another denizen of the laundry room is Ernst Gottlob's pastel portrait from 1775. I stashed it there until I had time to put it on the wall. I will say that this piece of art found a perfect home here with us. It's kinda ugly. It came up for auction in 2020 and nobody bought it. The fact that an unattractive pastel on vellum survived this long is kinda shocking. And somehow it made it 5,643 miles to our house in the US where an actual descendent of the artist could own and appreciate it. For a song. Did I mention that, inclusive of shipping, this thing cost me about $250? 

The other day after my Taskrabbit, Sarkis, left and I had put away many things in the new shelving unit in the laundry room mrguy pointed to the place on the wall in the kitchen den where I'd said I wanted to put it. He guided me in the pastel's placement, and I was way too lazy to get the real ladder from downstairs, so I got it as high as it could go. The goal was to get it high enough so that boy kitten couldn't reach. He immediately wanted to check it out. Hopefully he will not bring it crashing down.

And there it hangs, my mystery man gazing down on me, next to an Okiee Hashimoto print and a Katherine Sherwood.

Next, I have my eye on a portrait of Johnny Mathis.