Never tempt fate

Maybe I should have left well enough alone. I went more than two months without a post and we maintained the status quo. I write one lousy post and BOOM! A week later, Vic ends up in the hospital.

As I mentioned in the last post, he's never sure how he's going to feel when he wakes up. What I didn't mention was that every day that he doesn't feel well seems to be a different cause—gastric distress, low energy, dizziness or, my favorite, coughing up blood.
Everyone knows that in the movies, when someone coughs and then takes the hankie away and there's blood on it, that person is dead by the end of the movie. So I always want to go straight to the emergency room. Vic likes to take a wait-and-see approach, and in this case (the week before Christmas), his coughing spell didn't last long, so we went on about our merry way.

Two days later, we had an appointment with the reconstruction surgeon, and we mentioned it. She definitely wanted him to follow up with the oncologist, who has kind of become our primary care physician. He did some bloodwork, didn't see anything concerning (aside from the pesky platelet problem, for which Vic is taking prednisone), and again we went on about our merry way.

The great thing about prednisone is that it gives Vic a lot of energy, so this has been a pretty good week. We had three Christmases—a prime rib dinner on Christmas Eve with Vic's family hosted by one of Vic's sisters; an Italian-themed Christmas dinner, again with Vic's family but hosted by Vic's other sister; and a Boxing Day brunch hosted by me with my family.

Christmas Eve, L to R: Brother-in-law Rick, Rick's brother Gary, sister Patty,
nephew Nick, great niece GiGi, great niece Zoe (head turned away),
brother-in-law Ed, niece Lisa's nose, Patty; not pictured: sister/hostess Alice,
who was feeling a bit under the weather and was resting

Christmas, L to R: Brother-in-law Rick, niece Lisa, great niece GiGi, great niece
Zoe (you can't see her behind GiGi, but trust me, she's there), sister Patty

Boxing Day, L to R: Patty, sister Laura, great niece Madi,
great niece Fin (under the table), great nephew Will, nephew Xan,
niece Margeaux, brother-in-law Bill, Mom

It was such a lovely week, and we really enjoyed spending all this time with our family.

But lurking beneath the surface was (dun dun dun) aspiration pneumonia. One of the cancer gifts that keeps on giving is Vic's inability to swallow well. He's been doing OK (not great) for the past nine years, but this new tongue situation has compromised his swallowing even more. What happens is that food and liquids go down the wrong pipe and into his lungs. If he coughs a lot, he can get that stuff back up and out of there—but it still goes there, and with Vic's other ailments, his body has a harder time fighting these things off.

That's how we found ourselves in the wee hours of Sunday morning in the emergency room, where he got a chest X-ray that showed a pretty good-sized pneumonia and earned him an E ticket (you Millies might call it a Fastpass) straight to the hospital.

The antibiotics you get in the hospital are industrial strength, so even by the end of the day Sunday, he was feeling much better.

Unfortunately, they made him stay two more days, and we came home Tuesday afternoon. Glass half full: He didn't have to wake up in 2020 in the hospital. We're really voting for a no-hospital 2020.

Also unfortunately, because he was in the hospital, we didn't get the results from the bone marrow biopsy. (I did stop by the oncologist's office, and we probably wouldn't have gotten them Monday anyway because they had to send away for more tests. We are now scheduled to receive the results of the biopsy on January 6. Watch this space for that scintillating news!

To cap off this post, I will end as I often do, with a video of Bella. This one, she's getting a Greenie. She's much more animated when Vic is giving her the Greenie, but since he wasn't home, I took this video to show him I was taking care of his chores while he was away. 😄

Happy new year, everyone!