Still on Course

It’s been a crazy week, but after doing more flips and turns than a drunken stunt pilot, I am on course. I had my liver stent procedure last Friday with the goal of lowering my billirubin level enough to qualify for chemo. Going in, the expectation was that it would take about two weeks to get the full effect. Now, a week later, my billies are down from an initial 6.5 to 4.2 and I will have them tested again next Thursday. If I get about the same amount of further progress, maybe we will be close enough to do something. In the meantime, I am home, just trying to take it easy and avoid any further complications.

As to the flips and turns, I woke from the procedure with three issues – significant pain, a cardiac arrhythmia from the sedative, and some whacked out blood work. So I stayed an extra day in the hospital on a heart monitor and to get new blood work every 6 hours or so. But mostly, I needed the enhanced painkillers. At first they were giving me something which, to my blotto’d mind sounded like “fennel seed” and it worked about that well ( I suppose it was Phenyl-somethingorother) but when they switched to Dilaudid, I became a much happier man! For the most part, things settled and I came home Saturday night. As for the arrhythmia, that never really concerned me much - I felt that I just needed some rest and would be fine.

That plan seemed to work until late Monday night when I started to experience rather severe pain. By 3 a.m. the pain was incredible - I have never felt anything like it – and I’ve only ever said that once before – but that was in 1983 and involved a Swedish hand model and an orange sno-cone – so it was a totally different situation. In any event, Robbie and I went to the urgent care center at Sloan where they did Xrays, new bloodwork, another CT scan and, most importantly, gave me some “D-lord”. All the tests came back in better shape than when I left the hospital Saturday night – and my billies were already down to 3.5 – so I got a prescription for stronger pain meds and came home.

On Thursday, we met with Dr. S and I was quite optimistic that we were on track. To our surprise, my billies rebounded to 4.2, so he did another CT scan and consulted with the surgeon. In the end, it appears that the stent is in the right place and working so perhaps the uptick in billies is just an anomaly. To be cautious, though, I started a course of Cipro (antibiotic) just in case there’s some infection they can’t yet otherwise detect.

In the end, though, I’m still on course, with the billies down and the pain being well regulated. I am optimistic, actually, that this is all just part of the bumpy road that will get me back into therapy.

In the meantime, just for the joy of it, I wrote a good solid spreadsheet to model the economic value of a Credit Shelter Trust since we’re considering adding one to my will. It may sound a bit geeky (or a LOT geeky), but I enjoy financial modeling…even if I don’t have the bod for it that I used to!

In any event, that’s what’s new here. Hoping for an exceedingly dull week to come!! BB