Saturday, August 19, 2006

one step forward, two steps back

This has been a frustrating week. Last weekend, Dad started suffering from a peculiar side effect of the chemo pill he took every evening: his right eye was burning and ulcers started forming around his eye. On Monday, the doctor took him off the pill and asked us to give him a progress report in a week's time. Meanwhile, Dad has been backsliding all week and all the progress he's made in the last three weeks are being sucked down the drain. Hopefully he'll start back on the medicine on Monday at a half-dose and we'll see some progress again.

We leave on Monday and it's killing me to have to leave. I'm terrified that if no one is here to harangue him, he will neglect eating and keeping himself hydrated. The good news is that he has a monitor in his bedroom that measures his weight and blood pressure and he has to do it every day; if the measurements are out of whack or he doesn't do it at all, someone will call him, so at least he will have some kind of contact every day. Plus, he will have home visits from a nurse two to three times a week. As the nurse was leaving the other day, she asked me if I work. I said no and prepared to go into my speil about how hard it's been to find work over there but she shocked me when she said, "Good, don't get one, it will be good to be flexible over the next few months." Good god.

Today we're having a few friends and family over for a cookout. Luckily, Dad seems to have gotten plenty of sleep last night (which is fantastic considering he didn't sleep the two nights previously) and I think he's looking forward to it. Steph is already busy chopping up food for shish kabobs and I've got to go start tidying the place up a bit. I think it's going to be a good day.

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