Pictures for March Post

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March – Spring is Coming - maybe

2013 is continuing to be a challenging year for Charlie – I remember now the liver nurse at home saying that liver patients can continue on a pretty even keel for quite a while and then wham, their health starts down a slippery slope! That is totally what has been happening to Charlie since I last blogged! Fortunately, in his case, it is a slanted line that he is moving down. The doctors said that many hit the edge of the cliff and just “fall straight down.”  He has been in the hospital part of every week – actually 18 days in February. As his body gets more fragile, it is getting harder and harder to keep medicines that he needs in balance, etc. If one area gets better than another is compromised! An example of that is abdomen swelling (ascites) – he had so much trouble with that back in CA and had to have the fluid tapped off several times until the right doses of diuretics. That was totally controlled until a couple of weeks ago when the doctors changed the dosages because they felt that it was causing him to get dehydrated and confused! It only took a couple of days and he had about 10 pounds of fluid again - no confusion though!  So how do you keep all of the side effects of this disease in check?????? That is what is going on….

Added to this, is that he is temporally on the “transplant inactive list” until he finishes a round of antibiotics. He just spent a week in the hospital when they found out that he had a strep infection which then caused many tests to be done – ultrasound of the liver, echocardiogram of the heart valves, endoscopy, and colonoscopy. All of these were to rule out that the strep might be causing problems in those areas especially it can cause lots of problems in the colon and cancer. All came out negative, but he cannot be placed back on the list until he finishes the antibiotics – I have thought of giving them to him in one day, but thought better not!!!!!  So we wait “patiently” – not!!

Meg and Lucy came the middle part of February for 5 days and that was wonderful.  Nurse Meg took care of Charlie and I played with Lucy! It worked out great, because Meg got a chance to really talk to the nurses and doctors about everything going on with Charlie. (He was in the hospital 2 of the days they were here.)

We have had several snows and more is coming this week! We actually love seeing it snow and wish that we would get more!

Charlie’s sister is coming for a week’s visit starting next Sunday. She visited us about a year ago here. I may try to get to Des Moines to visit school girlfriends if Charlie is doing OK.

In a couple of days we will have been gone from home for 14 months – something like this does help you realize what is really important and it is so NOT your possessions! What is really missed is family and friends not your house and all that is in it! 

I will try to add a couple of pictures separately - one of Charlie and Meg and then one of Lucy sitting on Thomas Jefferson's lap at the mall.