Update from Dawn

Wally had a restless weekend. It is getting harder sometimes to keep him comfortable. Sometimes he is comfortable and sleeps or watches tv, but most of the time he seems very restless and in pain. But of course Wally wants to make sure everyone else is comfortable! When the dr. asked him if he was in pain he said, a "wee bit". When she left the room he was moaning and gripping the bed so hard I thought he was gonna break it! On our way to radiation, more later.

Back from radiation. Ralph called and said they were ready to deliver a hospital bed for Wally. Now he is trying to find help in moving Wally's regular bed out of the way to make room for the hospital bed. Right now Wally is resting quietly. He has had a rough morning. When I got here he was doing a breathing treatment and when that was done I noticed that he had oxygen. Sometime last night he had to get oxygen. He does not like it. They told him that he would need to get an x-ray and they wanted to take him in a wheelchair. I asked if they could take him in the bed instead and also he wanted to know why they did not do it in the room like last time. So I asked them. They said that they would need a doctors order to do it in the room with the portable xray machine.

I ordered him breakfast. . .after much coaxing! He wanted to wait until xray was done. I told him we could go ahead and order it because it takes about 40 minutes to arrive. So we ordered it and he took some pain meds. But then he waited for the wheelchair to take him to xray. He kept trying to get out of bed for it. When his food arrived he refused to eat it because he was waiting to go to xray. I had to go get the nurse to tell him to eat now and not wait. He still did not want to eat. He finally did eat about 3 bites of eggs and a few sips of chocolate milk.

He was very restless and when one of the doctors came in, he told her he was only in a wee bit of pain. Then he was moaning and writhing in pain after she left and when asked he said his pain was 8 or 9! We had to go through all the things to get the meds- ie scan his tag, get the med, log it in the computer, etc etc. That took a long time and while we were waiting he was miserable. He finally go his IV meds just before they arrived to do his portable chest xray.

Then they called to say he was to go to radiation. He was scheduled to go at 4:15, but I guess when you are at the hospital they can take him whenever they have an opening. They said that he moved around a lot today and seemed uncomfortable. Right now he is getting hooked back up to his iv and oxegen and his leg wraps. Not sure what they are called, but they massage his legs since he is not walking.