Earl in hospital

Around 11:00 p.m. last night I began to try to get Earl up out of his recliner and get him headed to bed. When he stood up and tried to walk, he was so unsteady on his feed he could not walk. When I asked him if he needed the wheelchair, he said yes. Right then I knew we had problems.

I decided I wasn't waiting until morning to get him some help. So, Liana and I gathered up a few things for him and wheeled him out to the car and headed to Park West a few minutes before midnight.

He was taken into an exam room at 12:25 a.m. Gregg drew several vials of blood for lab, but was unable to get the site to work for an IV. He tried twice more with no luck. He went and got Mark, who tried twice, still with no luck. Then they called in David, with 30+ years of experience. Finally, on his second stick he was able to get Earl ready for an IV. This was a total of seven times he was stuck! Earl's veins are in such bad shape from all the chemo! These guys tried really hard... just didn't have much to work with.

They did go ahead and start Earl on fluids, while they were waiting for lab results. The results showed the kidney and bladder infections are back again. He is also dehydrated, but not as severely as we suspected.

This makes, I think, six times he has been treated for the urinary tract infections since March or April. What makes it really hard to know what is going on is that he has no burning or stinging. Then we assume what back pain he is having is related to the cancer, since pain is expected with that. Or is it kidney pain from the infection? We are going to have to figure out some way to know when it is this infection and not cancer pain. But how?? We'll work on that for sure.

After conferring with the Oncology doctor on call, Earl was admitted and got into his room about 3:30 a.m. It took an hour or so to get him settled and hooked up, etc. Liana and I were both wired, but too tired to settle down. It was around 5 a.m. when she went home. I read until little before 7 a.m. when I finally began to drift off. A sleeping chair was brought in and I slept about 45 min. before they brought in his breakfast tray. Looked pretty good. Scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuit, juice, coffee and mandarin oranges.

Earl has been getting fluids all day, as well as antibiotics and potassium. Also getting another antibiotic pill three times a day... every eight hours. The IV antibiotic is levaquin. This is the stuff that his mother took that made her talk out of her head for three days recently. May get interesting if it does weird things to Earl, too!!

For now, we wait. Haven't seen a doctor today. Nurse says it is sometimes very late when doctors make rounds. Earl is hoping he will get to go home tomorrow, but we don't know anything now.

Please pray, pray, pray!
Our love and thanks to you all.
Lillian