I Get Lost In My Mind

Entry 1  1:18 p.m.

Jenny shows early signs of edema in her ankles. I am guessing the steroid she is taking is the reason for this, but I am not a doctor. She showed me her ankles yesterday, and I immediately looked up the side effects of her new steroid, being used off-label to increase her blood pressure. It has worked wonders. For the first time in 31 years, her blood pressure looks normal instead of low. According to the internet, the two side effects of the drug are high blood pressure and edema. I am hopeful that is it.  However, Jenny woke up this morning in terrible pain in her stomach. She reports that she had trouble leaning over from the edge of the bed when putting  on her pants. One of the side effects of cancer, and this cancer especially, is ascites--fluid created by the cancer that will pool in the interstices of your body. It is incredibly painful. Jenny is understandably worried this signals the end. She was sobbing this morning and I spent an hour comforting her. I think my reassurance calmed her down, or maybe it was the 1/2 lorazepam she took. 

Better Days

Things have only gotten more interesting. I have mentioned residual confusion in this journal recently, I think, leftover from the earlier delirium.  Well, the residual is back and its not just residue. Completely back. She is watching a documentary downstairs and was convinced it was a story about a friend of ours. It.  .    .   .  .   . was.   .  .  .  . . . not. And there were lots of other glitches. Jeanne is downstairs helping her through it, and for that I am grateful. The one thing I will say, and this I find fascinating, Jenny is never in the humor to make jokes and wisecracks  around me. She has, like any other intelligent person the ability to to do it, but she doesn't have the propensity--this diminution of humor occurred well before she fell ill. When she is confused, however, she cracks wise all the time. I came downstairs a few minutes ago and she told me that she is making a list of her friends that I might want to marry when she is dead.  It was a joke, an actual joke at the circumstances we are facing. I love that. It means she is more at ease, and that is so much better than the state I found her in earlier this morning as she worried about her ascites. So, I guess that is a gift.

The conversation between Jeanne and Jenny about el pinché this morning, easily overheard from my office thanks to the acoustics of this house, were interesting.  Jenny complained that whenever she sees the putz, that he is always only able to stay a short time--he is always busy. Last night after dinner, the schmuck left right away, and in a hurry.  Also, it is (un)clear that Eick really doesn't know of the affair. She said the wife doesn't believe Jenny is sick and dying. el pinché doesn't discuss Jenny with her any more because she loses her shit. So, the coward didn't tell her he was going to dinner with Jenny last night. He is a coward, and I am not surprised.

I didn't talk to Jenny when she got home around 7 last night, and she made no attempt to speak with me. She was so exhausted that she went straight upstairs to bed, with assistance from Leiney. Leiney and I binge-watched a show on Apple TV all evening, Invasion, and continued into the night after Jenny went to sleep.  I retired to bed at 11, waking at 2 when Jenny was experiencing terrible abdominal pain. I helped her find her pain meds and went right back to sleep.

This morning, as we sat together, and I was comforting her ( she couldn't lean in for a hug because of the pain, so I stretched my dwarvish arms over her cancer-narrowed shoulders) she told me that she needs to get the wheelchair--its been almost two weeks and we have heard nothing. She reported nearly falling twice at dinner last night. She could only then remember the first instance, and was baffled as to when the second occurred--my first clue she was having memory problems again. 

I called the durable medical equipment supplier and was on hold forever. We gave that up, and Jenny had me call Kaiser directly. That worked remarkably well, the order was placed on February 8, and the chair should have been delivered on the 9th. So, they said they would look into it and get back to us. I have been working all day , so who knows if that happened. What I do know is Jenny's demand for a wheelchair, after yesterday refusing to even bring her walker, may indicate a reckoning heretofore unseen. I won't presume so, given her reticence to admit she is terminally ill, and doing everything she can to prove to the world and herself that she is not.