Day 3: All Mixed Up!

Umm...Let's just say I'll explain this picture below.
Eric got to eat solid foods today! This is him celebrating with a Diet Sierra Mist and a turkey sandwich!

In some ways I think I should have written this post at about 3pm. Then, I would have labeled the post "AWESOME DAY!!!" Because it was a really awesome day in most ways. Miss Okie is rocking it! She (yes she, I just learned today) is making nice pretty pee. The kidney function jumped WAY up in today's labs (from the high 5's yesterday to 3.9 as of this morning)!

Eric is really doing a great job getting up and around. His pain is much reduced today. The cough is better, which helps a ton. He was supposed to walk from our room to the nurse's station 4 times. He has only walked 3 times, but he walked about 4 times as many steps as they expected him to. He has sat most of the day in a chair, and also stood and walked in place for a good half hour. I told Eric I was really proud of him. His typical Eric response was, "If you're going to do something, do it well." That's pretty much how he always conducts his life. Me, not so much. I'm really proud of him. He's so NOT a wimp.

They allowed Eric to start his regular insulin routine today, and also allowed him to start taking allergy medicine to help with the sinus drainage. These were both "wins" for us since we've been asking them to do both of those things since Sunday.

The last of the really great news is that IF things continue to go so well, his kidney doc said he could go home as early as Thursday night or Friday morning! The kids are coming home on Sunday, so if he went home on Friday that would give us a few precious days to get settled at home before the whole crew was there.

We got 5 good solid hours of sleep last night, which equals about 10 hours of "at home" sleep. Hospital sleep is so precious! LOL! The sleep really kept our spirits up today.

The paragraph in which I am not complaining.... My butt finally gave up the goat. It's decided that the pain is too much, so it's beyond pain now. It's gotten to that numb sort of pain that you don't focus on as much. Actually, I much prefer it! The other thing I'm not going to complain about is how gripey Eric was the last half of the day. He didn't get mad at me for reminding him to drink water or move around. Not at all. It wasn't really like we could look at the same item and see two completely different things. I'm not really freaking out about this new attitude being the first sign of the aggression that prednisone can cause in folks. I would never freak out about that, just because my dad turned totally abusive when he was on prednisone for a lung condition. I don't have any left over baggage at all about how prednisone changed my dad into a person I hardly recognized. Okay, the non-complaining paragraph is over now. =-)

Eric's blood levels are crazy high. Please pray for more controlled blood sugar. Before the transplant Eric's sugars were not what you would call well-controlled. He might get up to 400 some days, but he would also spend the majority of the time below 200. Since the night we got here his blood sugars have been between 375-450 consistently. They weren't giving him his usual insulin so we thought this was the problem. But now he is on his usual insulin and it hasn't made a bit of difference. High blood sugars are bad for any diabetic, but they are particularly scary to us because Eric has already lost most of his vision due to consistently high blood sugars in college. Honestly, I'm praying that he isn't going to wake up blind tomorrow because of these consistent highs. If his vision goes, it will go fast (like in a day) and we won't be able to get it back this time.

Without trying to find out (honestly)...without doing any digging whatsoever...one person in the whole line of people who know about the origins of Miss Okie told us a few basic facts about our donor. We are not supposed to know any facts, but of course we didn't say, "Stop! Don't tell us!" Someone who we shared those basic facts with took those facts and searched around a bit on the internet. We are fairly certain we know a great deal about our donor. I won't share the story here because Oklahoma is a connected place. People know people. And I would never want to add hurt to an already hurting family. Just know that the donor's family suffered a great tragedy. A "worst nightmare" kind of scenario. And even during their worst nightmare they gave of their loved one LIFE to many other people. That family gave LIFE to my husband. It's one thing to think of the donor as just "out there." It's another thing to see their picture and read comments from their loved ones. I guess it sort of feels like the unexpected sadness and love I have when I think about my kids' birth parents. I didn't expect to feel so grateful to them when we adopted the first time. But there is a love that binds us together. In the same way, it sort of hurts to see the person who gave life back to you/your husband. Just please pray for them. Hopefully we can meet our donor in heaven.

Here's the twilight zone moment of the day... I'm sitting in the chair and Eric is in the bed. I hear him say, "Hi there sweety." in his talking-to-a-kid voice. He waves to the closet. I'm like, "Eric, who are you talking to?" "The little girl over there by the closet." "Eric, what are you talking about?!" "The little girl over there. Can't you see?" then to the closet, "Hi there sweety. Don't be scared." At this point I told Eric that he needed to stop. It wasn't funny. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm not joking! Gosh Anita, she's right there!" That was it for me. I walked straight to the nurse's station and said we needed her NOW! I thought Eric's blood sugar may be low, even though he didn't show any of the usual signs of being low (sweaty, drunk-acting, etc.). They tested his blood sugar. That's when it hit me that DUH! This is what low sugar looks like on drugs! The pain killers and low blood sugar are probably something to behold! He proceeded to tell me that the little girl was black, around three years old. She had a white bandage on her head, and a pretty blue dress. She was scared and she wouldn't move.

Doo, doo, doo, doo, Doo, doo, doo, doo (music for effect)

But no low blood sugar. His blood sugar was still way high. Crap! How do you explain a way a little girl in the room that isn't really in the room, if you don't have low blood sugar to blame it on?! Once the nurses came in Eric said, "Oh, I realize what I was doing. My water bottle looked like a little girl. I was just seeing it wrong." The nurses were like, "Oh, okay. I can see how you would have made that mistake." What?! Really? I know he has low vision but he's never mistaken a water bottle for a little girl before! They sort of looked at me out the corners of their eyes saying, "Keep a close eye on him Anita!"

You know what sort of freaked me out? You know how some people think that when you take a donor organ (usually hearts) you can take on deep memories and personality traits of your donor? Well, if our donor is who we think she is, she had a "young child." And the young child would have been dark skinned. I'm just saying...

I'll leave it at that. Now wipe the goosebumps off your arm! If you do that I'll try not to keep looking over towards the closet for our little friend!

Anita

P.S. So now you understand the picture at the top with Eric in bed, the watter bottle, and the closet in the background.