Karen's Blog

Karen’s pain has subsided a bit over the last couple days. She’s only taken oxy a couple times today. She’s still in pain but less than before. It’s good that she’s found a more manageable pain level, but we’re both a bit worried about her increasing troubles with breathing. As her kidney troubles progress this…

Karen is spending a lot of time sleeping, but is in less pain. The mixture of meds the docs gave her to address her back pain seem to have worked, and let whatever it was heal up, so she’s back to just having the stomach pain. She’s taking less of the oxy right now. Friends…

Hospice changed up some of Karen’s meds, and took her completely off others. They increased the amount of oxy she can take, and have another med coming tomorrow that will work with the oxy to reduce her pain further. Altogether we seem to have a better plan for pain management, which is a relief. It…

We signed for Hospice today, which will change a few things for Karen. Karen is no longer receiving treatment for her cancer, so her care has been in limbo since discharge. All the same doctors are willing to continue helping her, governmental regulations make pain management very difficult, since she can’t travel up to the…

Today we reached out to hospice so Karen has better care for her symptoms. She’s still having pain in her back, and we have some new meds to help. The effort it took to help her with this was one of the deciding factors to start hospice care. We don’t want to wait too long…

Karen was sleepy most of the day, but we did have a visit from an Occupational Therapist from Mt Carmel Home Health. The nurse will be working with us over the next couple weeks to see if she can help us move around the house better. Karen can sit and stand with my assistance, but…

Karen pushed herself pretty hard over the weekend, and is getting some well earned rest. She’s trying to take the medication to reduce her ammonia levels, and that’s going better than it was. It’s some pretty nasty tasting stuff, so we’re using Italian shaved ice treats to clear the palate between gulps. That’s making it…

The trek outside yesterday left Karen feeling a bit tired today. She was up for a bit late morning, but after that we spent the day resting, including a mid afternoon nap for me. We did manage to get the new Ipad mini figured out well enough to make a couple FaceTime calls early evening….

I don’t have much of an update for today, but wanted to post something so nobody worried. Karen slept late but was up most of the rest of the day. We got an I-pad mini from Amazon and we joined the apple cult so we could FaceTime. The homemade wheelchair ramp that was recently finished…

I’m glad we have this blog to share updates. Sometimes it can be a bit challenging for us to keep people up to date while we care for Karen, and this blog makes that a lot easier. I’m glad you are reading this. Thank you. Click through to read more…