So I try to go to bed early and get some rest and now I've been tossing and turning for the last hour and figured what's the point. I called Jim's nurse to see how he's doing. She took the oxygen mask off and now he's just got the oxygen in his nose. They were able to reduce the pain meds and he says he's not in pain, just still coughing up crud, but he's a lot more comfortable. They're still trying to adjust his blood pressure to get it to a level they like...it's a little high but not that bad. He can't get to a regular room, though, until they get it down a little. I was told before he got this tumor out that even thought the tumor was the cause of the high blood pressure, because he's had the high pressure for so long he may not be able to get rid of that, but maybe have to only take one pill instead of three.
I can't believe this, though. I try to get more rest to stay healthy and my body rejects it. Here I was worrying about Jim's psych consult. I think I need a psych consult. At least I'm not as mushy mushy as I was last night. It might have been the onion soup. I'm going to try a valium now and see if I can go back to sleep.
While I'm at it I just want to clear up something for a few people who haven't heard the story from the beginning: this type of tumor is not cancerous. Well, sometimes a pheochromocytoma is, but very, very rarely- only about 10 percent of the time. It's just a very slow growing thing that eventually kills you due to it's size. They estimate this has been in Jim's neck for between 5 and 10 years and he had no idea. Dr. Dolan says he's never seen one as large as what Jim had. Typically these things are found on the adrenal glands. Sometimes they can be in the bladder and then you pass out every time you pee. It's really not funny. but at 5 a.m. I do find that kind of funny. What makes Jim's so rare is the combination of being a pheo and a carotid body tumor, meaning in between the two branches of the carotid artery. We only found out he had this because he went to get dental work done and under anesthesia his vital signs went crazy. The dentist said, Whoa! Something's wrong with you- I'm not touching you until you get yourself checked out. And 8 months later, after lots of testing and a few doctors, here we are.
Well, I'm going to lay back down now and watch t.v. and wait for my 7 a.m. wake up call.
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