I made Jim wear his "I went to Lahey Clinic to Get My Tumor Removed and All I Got Was This Lousy Sweatshirt" shirt yesterday and the whole place got a big kick out of it. In every department he went to they paraded all the doctors and nurses by him. They also took his picture in Radiology and Infectious Disease for their department newsletters. A table of doctors and nurses came by in the cafeteria. Hey, if you have to have a tumor you might as well get a laugh out of it. The doctors all said he was doing great...even though he can't see it. They gave him a script for Lexapro and insisted he get it filled right away and start taking it immediately. Yeah...I had to fight them tooth and nail for it and now they act like it was all their idea. He has to come back in two months. They want him to heal a little more and then take a new baseline cat scan. Infectious disease also wants to give him a potent drug cocktail to make sure the antibacterial resistant staph gets completely wiped out of his body. But they don't want Jim to take it right now. They want him to recover more. He may have to take the cocktail twice.
We didn't get home until around 11 pm. then Jim took his first Lexapro dose. Now, I don't know if it's psychosomatic or what, but I think the first dose actually helped Jim. He made a 180 degree turnaround today. He woke up pleasant and claims he has a lot more energy, he worked today, and has more of his old personality back. Looks like I won't have to kill him after all. I don't know if it's possible to make that big of a turnaround after one dose, but I'll take it. He still claims the liquid "food" gives him a stomach-ache so he's not using as much as he's supposed to, but somehow he's managed to maintain his weight at 153 for about 10 days now.
And even though he's really only supposed to be using water, he's actually drinking chocolate milk in small sips and it's going down the right pipe. I made him talk to me after every sip to make sure he didn't sound like he was under water, and he sounded clear. For those of you who haven't seen or spoken to him, though, you will be shocked. His voice is hyper-nasal and he's pretty emaciated. His therapist has made him shave all the hair off his face so you can clearly see where he was cut open like a butchered pig...three times. He's having a hard time grasping the fact that when you go through an injury of any kind it takes a long time to feel normal again. Anyone who's broken a bone knows that even though you might be able to walk on the bone after so many weeks it doesn't really feel "normal" for a year or so, and sometimes it's never really what you remember as "normal" again.
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