Pain Control has improved

Sorry for the lack of updates-- seems like we never get a free moment.

Brody started a new pain med on Monday and it seems to be helping. The new med helps with neuropathic pain (nerve pain) and he seems ALOT more comfortable since he started it. We have not had to increase his other med since he started it and he overall seems to be feeling much better. His nausea had been increasing along with his pain before and while not gone, it is much better. He has been tasting and "eating" some food in the last week. When I say eat-- we have allowed him to eat some foods that we feel are safe to pass out his G-tube-- So far just oat meal and chicken soup broth with crackers and Fun Dip. He has been wanting to "taste" more foods too-- this involves taking a bite-- chewing it and spitting it out-- he had some pork chops, hot dogs, pizza rolls, and a turkey sandwich. He had not wanted to taste anything in a few weeks so we are calling this an improvement.

Brody continues to sleep a lot of the day-- most days he is rarely up more than 5 or 6 hours (some days as little as 3 hours). While he is sleeping a lot, his sleep is not very restful-- he gets up A LOT to go potty-- I'd say at a minimum he gets up 20 times per day. His tumor for quite some time presses on his colon/rectum and gives him the sensation of having to go potty. He has nothing moving through his bowels-- he hasn't put anything out his colostomy in almost 2 months now and the only thing he is passing is a mucus with a small amount of blood at times-- it is usually just a few drops at a time. Nonetheless, he is up sometimes several times an hour while he is sleeping-- but thankfully he sometimes can go a few hours at a time without having to go potty.

His pain increase he had been experiencing had been in his right leg-- how it would go is he would be sleeping or lying in bed-- have to go pottly, while going potty or about the time he would get up to get back in bed, his leg would start hurting him bad making him need more pain med, repeat.... he still complains of pain in his leg at times but it is not nearly as severe as it had been and so we are calling his pain issues much much better than they had been. 

From a pain perspective-- his only bad day he had this week was on Wednesday when he went to hospital to get his port re-accessed. The hospice nurses can do this but he prefers Nurse Laura or Nurse Ruth at Toledo Childrens Hospital to do his port needle changes

For those that don't know-- a "port" is a sub-dermal central line-- it is inplanted in Brody's chest and goes into one of his major veins with high flow-- all of his IV meds are delivered through this. The Needle and dressing need to be replaced weekly.

We have continued to celebrate Christmas a little each day-- although a few of the days he wasn't up to this.

On Tuesday Brody got his new bird cage but was not up to bird shopping-- He said he wanted a blue parakeet so Trish went and picked one out for him on Wednesday night--- Brody named his new bird "Blueby" (I'm not exactly sure of the spelling)-- Blueby has been pretty quiet since we got him-- Brody has been trying to teach him to talk a little bit but without success.

I would like to write more but I have nursing duty right now and have a long list of things to do in the next hour.

Thanks to everyone for the presents he has gotten so far.... they do brighten his day.

Bill