Loose Strife

Laura spent a second day in the hospital and it was slow, but good. Several friends stopped by. Thanks for that. And thank you so much to the friends who have been watching Naomi and Lily for the past 48 hours!
The hospital was so busy that Laura waited much of today for an endoscopy to look in her gut. Considering the fact that Laura hardly eats much of anything, the irony was that she badly wanted to eat and drink after fasting for 14 hours. Ultimately it was rescheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday) so she gets to do it all over again.
Laura talked with a neurologist who, surprisingly, said she is having migraines — even though they are of short duration and frequent. I guess it’s a broad term. The neurologist does not think it’s a drug interaction, but wouldn’t guess what the cause is. He put Laura on a new headache drug that builds in efficacy over a few days, so we’ll see how it works. This afternoon the “hospitalist” (the coordinating physician) witnessed a medium attack and saw how it paralyzed her, keeping her from moving or talking. I think that was helpful to demonstrate the severity. The good news is that she hasn’t had the extreme attacks for two days: no vomiting, no nausea. I suspect it will continue that way and she’ll probably be coming home tomorrow or early Thursday after meeting with a few other specialists and getting the endoscopy.
But nobody knows what’s causing the headaches or the vomiting. Actually, she throws up for at least two reasons: chemo or cancer-related and migraine-related. (In the early days of her diagnosis, before chemo, she threw up for yet another reason apparently related to the fluid around her lungs, but that has subsided.) The migraine-related heaves are typical of severe attacks, so hopefully the new meds will deal with that. There’s some suspicion that the migraines are due to a change in narcotic four weeks ago. The opposite hypothesis is that the narcotic is actually keeping them from being worse. This is supported by the fact that they might have become worse during the last week while Laura reduced her dosage during this same week. But the dosage reduction was done to try to reduce chemo/cancer-related nausea, so it’s obviously complicated!
A friend with decades of personal experience with debilitating headaches (I shudder to imagine) suggested that, as in his case, it might be muscle related, which especially makes sense since Laura has been almost bedridden for months. Several doctors acknowledged that muscle-related headaches can be severe, but said that the description of Laura’s episodes and the fact that they’re not triggered by movement (they often can wake her up) doesn’t favor that theory. Another idea is that they’re hormone related since Laura was on a ovarian suppression drug until the end of November.
So again, nobody knows. And the body is a complex system. Ideally the cause can be found and eliminated, but otherwise we can only hope that the symptom can be addressed effectively.
Laura also met with a psychiatrist, a dietician, and someone who does something called “reiki”. As I understand it, reiki is essentially a touch therapy that makes you feel more relaxed. So, it was humorous to watch the reiki person go through a litany of questions about Laura’s condition and record lots of paperwork just so she could lay her hands on her. Modern medicine meets faith healing, I guess.
The dietician’s meeting was excellent. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been concerned about Laura’s lack of nutrition since she hasn’t had a solid food for months (with very minor exceptions). But surprisingly, the dietician wasn’t concerned about solid food, she was just interested in making sure that Laura could easily consume sufficient food for necessary calories, proteins, and other nutrition. Liquids will do. She had some good ideas for other foods and concoctions that I can whip up. Nothing earth shattering, just things like protein-fortified milk shakes or cutting her Ensure nutritional drink with milk so it’s more palatable and she can more easily consume more and get more hydration.
Last, now that we live in faraway Ashfield, to all of you reading this who live in the Northampton area, go visit Laura while you can — day or night. It is utterly amazing to see how Laura is transformed by visits from friends!