I've noticed that since Jim's been off his therapy his speech and swallowing has deteriorated a little. He's getting more Joe Pesci-ish...talking out of one side of his mouth...and he chokes more on his "food". It's not awful, but it had been better. But he goes for his throat muscle test on June 25th so after that Dr. Speigel will be able to concoct a new diagnosis for him to get through Aetna's bureaucracy and we should be able to get him back into therapy. I was thinking that even if Jim goes once a week until then and we just pay for it out of pocket it might be worth it, but the 25th is coming up fast so I'll leave it alone.
And guess what? I got reimbursed for the Boston hotel stay. Kind of a long story there. H.R. had to act like a mob enforcer to get it for me, but I got it.
So Jim's been sick the past three days. I'll put it nicely...he can't stray far from the bathroom for very long....and he's been up several times a night running in there. So he's kept to working from home this week. With the drive to Princeton there's no way he'd keep his butt cheeks pressed together that tight for that long. Gross, right? But when have you all ever known me to mince words with colon talk? Now at first I thought it might be a virus because Jimmy had a little bout of something after he spent Saturday eating junk at a birthday party, but Jimmy's episode was over in an hour. With Jim, this has been going on a little long, and Jim DID have that PEG tube out last week and was told this could be one of the more dangerous side effects, but was supposed to be accompanied with pain, which he doesn't have, so I wasn't sure what to do. Of course, he wouldn't go to the doctor. I gave him Cipro last night and again this morning. I've got a stash from all my years of having inflammatory bowel disease, and I know that's a good drug for killing the bad bacteria living in your lower intestine. I figured if he's got a virus it won't help at all. If he's got an infection then it should help. It helped. By this afternoon he was much better. I'm going to make him go to the doctor tomorrow anyway. I ignored him and made an appointment.
I made some beef vegetable soup on Sunday that we've been stuck eating since then and Jim actually ATE A VEGETABLE! I don't say this because it's great he COULD eat a vegetable....I say this because Jim never ate a vegetable in his life. Plus he managed to get down some of the beef pieces that were in the soup.
On the bad side, the few pounds that Jim was able to gain after he got released from the hospital are now gone because of his intestinal thing. He's actually a pound LESS than he was when he was released from Lahey Clinic. Not for nothing....if only weight loss were this easy for women.
Now something strange...I had given my mother a glossy picture of Jim's tumor. She thought the colors were really pretty and she framed it and put it in her dining room. This way if someone comes over and they're chatting about Jim she can just whip out the picture and show it to them. But who am I to talk. I framed a picture of the tumor too and gave it to Jim so he can put it on his cabinet at work. Speaking of Mom, remember a couple posts ago when I was talking about my strange post traumatic stress image in my head? She thinks I saw Jim bleeding out and just blocked it, so the image I'm seeing in my head is real and not a dramatization. I suppose this is possible. My father-in-law was standing right next to me and says he saw it. It would be odd that we were both standing there and he saw it and I didn't. Well, whatever. Can't do anything about it. I just shake my head fast like a cartoon character...whompa whompa whompa whompa....you know the sound....and say "Shake it off, shake it off," and that's what I do.
I almost forgot to add this. Here's Jim sick:
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