Monday, April 29, 2013

A slight jog in the routine...

Hello all you followers of Glenn's blog.  The silence on here means it's been very routine with our lives. Glenn's dialysis has been going well, although this morning the cycler "broke" before it was done with the final cycle. There is  support tech  for when things like that happen. He just calls the number and tells them what's going on and they can direct him as to what to do. This morning the support person said he was ordering another cycler and it should be here tomorrow. In the mean time Glenn has been doing the manual exchanges today that he used to do before he started on the cycler. He forgot a couple steps the first time he did a manual exchange this morning, one of which was to clear out the air in the tubing before he hooked up. That has resulted in pain in his shoulder, the same as you might get during surgery; an air pocket forms inside and travels up to the shoulder where for some reason it causes pain. It may take a day or two  for it to resolve, hopefully not any longer than that. It seems to be quite painful. The heating pad helps,and moving around and standing up aggravate it. The other thing he forgot to do is to heat the bag of  fluid  that goes into his abdomen with a heating pad or else it causes abdominal pain. That pain went away in an hour or so, with the help of the heating pad on his stomach. Poor guy, this hasn't been a good day for him. On the positive side, I think we've got his blood pressure under control finally with the right combination of 5 different blood pressure drugs.
 He seems to be getting more and more tired lately. We go to the local oncologist this Wednesday and will be able to find out what his blood counts are doing. They draw it every time he goes and we get the results within an hour. I don't like going so long between blood tests and not knowing what it's doing. We also go to G'ville next Wednesday to see how the disease is doing. His platelets continue to be low with no explanation  for it. (Platelets control blood coagulation, and when it is low there is a higher risk of bleeding.)
We have been trying to figure a way to go RVing out west to the Grand Canyon and to Texas to visit. So far it's our of our reach. But I'm asking God to work that out. He hears, so we'll see what his answer is. Glenn has wanted to go to the Grand Canyon while he is still able, and we both have wanted to go RVing. That's actually the least complicated way for us to go anyway because of his having to do dialysis, having to bring all the supplies along. Unfortunately it's not the cheapest way. But I strongly believe that God will make it happen. I'll keep you posted on that.