Magic Elixir

Welcome, Summer!

Holy Cow did it get hot or what? I love the warm weather, but anything over 80 degrees to me is overkill. Johnny can't tolerate much in the extreme temperature department, so we stayed in all day. And napped. Both of us. While our kids ran amuck.

I took a three hour nap today, and yesterday. I only napped for two hours on Friday. I see a trend developing here. I think it is due to the little happy pill that Dr. Al-Fadhl gave me last week. He was very sweet and asked if I needed something to "get me through" this tough time. Since I couldn't even speak without crying, I readily agreed. Well, I cannot keep taking three hour naps and then going to bed at 10 p.m. and sleeping all night. This is way better than insomnia, but I am getting absolutely nothing accomplished! I slept more today than the resident cancer patient. Pitiful.

I went to work for a little bit this weekend to catch up on some unfinished stuff. Yesterday, while at work for about an hour, Johnny paged me. I called him back and he told me I had to come home RIGHT NOW. I literally ran to my car and called him back. He was having trouble going "potty" and was breaking out in a sweat and getting very nauseated. The surgeon had told us at our first visit that surgery didn't have to be imminent because the colon wasn't completely obstructed. In fact, there was plenty of room for the colonoscopy probe to pass through, so we really didn't need to worry about obstruction. Well, of course, that was our first thought when he was not able to go.

On my way home I called the on-call RN for Hematology/Oncology. I told her what was going on and she said that chemo is SUPER constipating. Oh, yeah. They told us that in the lecture titled "1001 Things That May Happen To You During Chemo" on the day before Johnny started Chemo. We had basically forgotten that little tidbit until it actually happened.

She gave me a Magic Elixir recipe guaranteed to clear constipation in 30 minutes or less. No joke. She said, "Make sure he is near a toilet." For real. Within a half hour, my Johnny was double-timing it to the can. Whew. He felt better almost immediately, but the fear lasted the rest of the day for both of us. (Visions of emergency colon surgery have plagued me all weekend!)

So, added to the list of things for Next Time, right after "Shave Chest" will be "Take Stool Softener". See -- we will get the hang of this, you just wait and see.

If you're interested in the Magic Elixir recipe, just give me a call. Good stuff.