WOW!! SUCH A BETTER DAY

What a difference today.  We finally got some straight talk from the most awesome nurse ever (and lets face it…they know just as much as the doctors) and from an amazing doctor, not an oncologist yet but a fantastic very blunt doctor.

First of all they could only do a partial colonoscope.  He was so blocked up high (read constipated, sorry peeps) that they couldn't get a biopsy.  But…they do know that this is not colon cancer.  The cancer is on his colon for sure but it isn't the primary cancer.  And without a biopsy they do not know what kind it actually is.  They need to do a proper colonoscope…and to do that he is going to be kept in the hospital and 'cleaned' out.    So he is being made to eat and drink, and he is being given some pretty hefty drugs to get it all moving.  So his stomach isn't huge and distended from cancer fluid, its huge and distended by….well you know.  I am glad he is in there for the next few days!!!  Hahaha!!

Being a diabetic, and one where his sugar numbers are out of control, you should have seen what they brought him for lunch.  A big bowl of chocolate pudding, a bowl of vanilla pudding, ensure (which is loaded with sugar) and juice.  Crazy! So now I am taking in his food..low carb stuff he likes.

They told us that his prognosis is " sooner than later' but has at least weeks if not a few months at most.  And they told him it was going to be very painful.  But they took him off the iv today so he can really move around so much more easily.  And he was looking fantastic, good colour, sharp as a tack, really funny, teasing everyone.  So they are going to try to do a colonoscope next week and once we know the cancer type he will be shuffled off to the cancer clinic to decide what the best course of action is.

He will be glad to get out of the hospital.  Frankly its just like being on a cruise ship to the power of 100.  The place is plumb full of old rotting bodies, still barely alive.  It is also full of crazy old men.

He is in a room with three other men.  One of them has no teeth and no chin to speak of.  When he talks it sounds like he is gasping his last gasp and he has to be at least 110 years old.  He keeps talking about the war like its happening right now.  He suddenly hollers out today, "So what do you think of that Churchill guy?  Seems to be doin' it right!"  What??? Churchill?  So I asked him about Harper….no clue what I was talking about!!

Another one in there is one of those whiners.  He has diabetes, didn't take care of himself and now has an infection in his foot…maybe losing it.  He wasn't quite as old as the other three but old enough to know better.  No candy bars.  No slurpees.  No big icy drinks from starbucks.  Seriously!  His wife was telling the nurse that that was what he always had.  And all the time whining.  Its hot, its cold, the blanket is falling, my ice has melted, lunch was awful (your in a hospital Dude) and on and on.

And then there is Gordie.  OH MY GOD!!  He is the most vile, mean, nasty, rude dementia ed person EVER!  At first you don't like to judge, after all he is older than dirt and crazy.  But really!  He gets right in your face, shaking his finger, and starts ranting about government conspiracy theories, which apparently we are all a part of.  I frigging wish!!  Then he hoops and hollers for his food, which he then refuses to eat. He hollers to get out and when the nurse comes to calm him down he calls her terrible names and is so freaking rude you want to pound him on his head.

Apparently last night he was hollering and screaming horribleness to the point where even Bill got mad and he never ever gets mad at stuff like this.  Finally the nurses removed him and put him in the hallway.  Earlier though his daughter and husband came to visit.  He kept asking when he was going to go home.  They kept telling him not til he could be nice!  Haha…but then the two of them got into a big fight..right there in the middle of the room!  They were fighting about money and expenditures!  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree obviously!

And when we walk around the hospital, doesn't matter where you are, its just full of old old old half dead people.  You can't even tell if they are men or women anymore, their eyes are always shut, they are so skinny they look like liver spotted skeletons…it crazy!  When the rack of lunch trays arrived they were all broths, jello, puddings, yoghurts…not because of bowel problems, because they don't have teeth.  Its down right depressing.  

So now we are home.  Arnie and I had awesome sushi on the back deck with a bottle of wine.  We are now having a second one and watching cooking competitions.  So relaxing! and fun.  TTYL