How many doctors does it take to...

I am needing ridiculous amounts of sleep this week! At least I'm not sleeping at the hospital - Ben's getting exhausted. Oh, but hospital secret: you can ask to have a "do not disturb between 10pm and 6am" sign on the door. Why have we never heard about this before? Honestly, you would think it would be the default. The sign doesn't actually stop people from coming in, but the nursing assistants will try to avoid getting vitals during those hours.

After getting in my nine hours last night, I ran some errands and got to the hospital in the early afternoon. While Ben was gone for an x-ray to check his stint placement and then an MRI (because doctors tend to freak whenever they hear the word "headache") a number of medical personnel poked their head in the door, looking for him. Having a variety of issues sure makes you popular around here.

Here's the run-down of today's news:

Happy stuff: nothing bad on the kidney/liver ultrasound, pneumonia continues to improve, stint placement was double-checked on an x-ray and appears as it should,

Nebulous news: Kidney levels continue high, but are slightly lower than yesterday - which fits with the prevailing "it will fix itself" theory. No word on the biopsy from the lungs yesterday.

And Iffy surprises:

At one point a nurse came in, plugged a pipe-shaped instrument into the wall and handed it to Ben. Vapor started coming out, and he inhaled. It turns out that this is a nebulizer. When she left, Ben said "Oh, and they'll be sending one home with us." What? It turns out that the vapor helps keep the stint open, but between us we really have no idea how long Ben will be using it. A month? Forever??

At 4:40pm (on a Friday) I left a message on the pulmonary nurse's voicemail, so I imagine we probably won't hear any more about this until next week. While Ben was gone, a medical equipment delivery guy came and demonstrated Ben's very own nebulizer to me. Oh boy.

And... here's the bigger surprise: Ben might have a second stint put into his throat at one of the problem swallowing spots. This was from a doctor who came in to see Ben twice, both times when he was out, and mentioned the subject if we must already know. Sounds like there will be some more information coming tomorrow at least.


Thank you for your prayers! Between talking to half the staff of MD Anderson I've had some free time this week, so please let me know how we can pray for you too. My email address is Licafecad at gmail.com.