Dad had his first doctor's appointment since arriving home today.
Dad had acquired bed sores on his rear from the hospital stay, so the nurses had given him a patch designed to help deal with that, so he could sit down. Well, the patch came off in a way that left dad in an awkward position, and he's been uncomfortable sitting down. This patch has been replaced.
The wound continues to heal, and it looks better each day, but it's somewhat amazing how long this is going on. We're at a point where the tape used to keep the bandage on his chest is starting to take up skin, requiring us to use a larger bandage (so the tape won't be on the part of the skin that's been getting a lot of tape). We still continue to change the bandage twice daily.
Dad's blood counts continue to be normal, except for an elevated white blood cell count (attributable to the infection and the wound). There are one or two abnormal cells that seem to pop up, which might be nothing, but the doctor wants to make sure. Next week, Dad will have to go in for another bone marrow aspiration to determine if he's still in remission. Frankly, I'm banking on the odd cells being left over from the chemotherapy.
Dad's kidneys continue to work well.
Because there's still some of the chemicals from the chemotherapy left in his system, food still tastes nasty to him. About the only thing he enjoys consuming is milk, although he'll force himself to eat other things. Dad has complained that he's hungry, but he just can't bring himself to eat much, since everything tastes so bad to him. His diet has been mostly milk, yogurt, some bread, banana pudding, and an occasional soup of some kind (usually creamy, or chicken broth).
Dad's strength is slowly returning. Although it exhausts him, he is able to get out of the house occasionally to do things (such as the hospital visits). He had one nauseous experience this morning, probably due to the medicine he's taking (antibiotics). He wears down easily, but he's becoming increasingly more mobile.
He hasn't attacked his e-mail yet, but I think he's going to do so shortly. Again, we haven't found out how much e-mail he has, but we anticipate it's a quite a lot, so be patient for a response if you're waiting for one.
I know many of you will want to call and visit, and we would enjoy that, but understand that he's still pretty weak, and needs time to heal. Please try not to call or visit (no exceptions) until you hear otherwise, either from my sister, myself, or Dad (if he should call you). If you absolutely must get some kind of word to him, please send him e-mail, and be patient when waiting for a response.
Again, he's doing well, but he's very weak.. that's really the only reason for limiting his visits and phone calls.
You may compare today's report against the last report.