Casey...

 

hehehe
Cartoon Borrowed from here.
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Good Evening.
Top question from my email and my answering machine (besides "send us your money or else"), is "How is Casey?"
She is still hospitalized.
We have not heard back from Froedtert yet either.
Perhaps a call from her doctor here will get that ball rolling. (Even after I had b*tched at him for ignoring her calls, and her pain, the other day).

Her amylase and lipase counts -more than doubled when she was admitted, had begun to come back down yesterday.
Unfortunately those same counts were on the rise again today, securing at least one more day in the hospital for her.

She called a few hours ago, feeling much worse than when I had visited earlier.

• She is in obvious pain.
• She is tired.
• She is stressed.
  
  • And darned hungry

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AND,
she is hanging in there too.
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She has a gentle, very soft spoken, and kind, lady doctor. (Dr. Sinclair).
And I believe these doctors are finally realizing that this girl of mine canNOT be treated as conventional medicine would allow for chronic pancreatitis.
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This, because she is NOT their conventional pancreatitis patient.
She is 21.
By anyone's admission she is approximately 40 years too young to be having this affliction to begin with.
WTH?
Quite obviously she can't be treated the same as a 60 year old man who has drank his way through the last 40 years of his life.
(I do believe she is rewriting the medical books for this disease)...
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...Or perhaps just the coloring books...

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hehehe

(A great diversion if you ask me).

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One nurse had 'secured' her IV (against Casey's protests) a bit too tight.
The "bruising" you see actually bled...
(That nurse has been dealt with
and is not permitted in Casey's room anymore).
This one being the only negative experience this time.
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But then I come home from the hospital,
and am welcomed home by this sight.
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My 2nd driveway
turning to Autumn...

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Miss Punk misses her.
That little toy a sorry replacement for licking Casey's Face.

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• Sputnik misses her too...

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Meow! (Means "Hi Casey")!

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But at least Sputty has been kept a wee bit busy...
It is that time of year again...
...And the "mouses" are so very entertaining to him. He always shows a murderous side, spotting them.
Yes, he had one, quite tortured (and quite dead) by the time I removed it to the dumpster.

Dumpster?!?!?
Oops. (I never rolled it back in from the road today).
No big deal.
I didn't remember to roll it out there in the first place.
*sigh*
Good thing it's not hot and humid because that dumpster can really stink when the weather is warm.

Weather? We have not gone down to freezing again.
It has even been warm~ish (for us, and for now). I think it was about 70 today. That, and finally seeing the sunshine after all the rain was more than welcomed! And I believe this warmer weather may continue through the weekend.

Not too much other news... Actually no other news. hehehe

And time for me to catch up on a few of your own entries.

Have a good one!
Love to all.

XOXO
Anne

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Originally posted to my Y! 360 Wednesday October 8, 2008 - 11:05pm (CDT)

Beans. Boys. Bees. (And Pincushions)...

 

Devils Claw and Morning Glory...

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Good Morning All;
I have been remiss with my blogging, feeling much like this cat...
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Picture stolen from an email
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I have had another migraine since last night... Been fighting that on my own, here; and obviously feeling a bit better right now.

Sunday found us back at the hospital with Casey's pancreas.
She is home, having had her pain treated again. One day someone will figure something out. In the meantime I am questioning the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent educating these doctors.
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I had Master Gabriel- And so our visit was spent at St. Marys.
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Gabriel and I have a little routine...
I pick him up, and we go to the local Kwik Trip Station-
He always gets a banana.
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And so that is what he is holding here...

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What does Casey think about not being able to eat or drink anything?
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Gabriel 'hiding' from the camera behind the sheet.

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And Punk, waiting patiently in the car...
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I dropped Gabriel off as we left the hospital. But having had that day cut short, I did pick him up again on Monday; being able to spend the whole day with him.
And we were real busy!
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Beans to pick...

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And to 'picnic' on too!

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Want one?
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Too slow...
And it disappeared!
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Back up to the house then;
and to the remnants of my silly garden.
Master Gabriel picked an ear of corn for each of the dogs...

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They all love this little treat...
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Especially Punk...

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Sue and Glenn came over to gather the fallen apples and pears.
(They have tame deer that they can hand feed these to).

I shot darts with Sue, Carol, and Beth for many years.
We did very well together too.

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Just one handful of pears...

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Glenn came with the pails then...

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This is only their 2nd trip this year.

Kind of short pickings on the apples,
but the pears have grown well.

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Notice the brown ones on the ground too.
Left behind by the deer, with bites out of them too.
They are covered with wasps, bees and hornets.

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Can anyone tell me why that one on the top right is markedly different from his striped friends?
I can't find any information on this one,
(looks like it mated with a black widow spider to have that little hourglass on his hinder).

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Gabriel loves the pears!
(He ate 3 of them)...

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And his flowers too!
My young horticulturist...

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Yes, there are a few flowers left...
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Yet the view from the woods NE,
betraying the 80° temperatures
that we have had these past few days...
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And that is why those deer are being hand fed my apples and pears; as the trees, some reluctantly, have given up their fruit for this year.
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Glenn deals with the more 'reluctant' apples...

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I owe Gritter and her husband much for picking these fruits and removing them for me.

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Glenn is hysterical...
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Sassy too sometimes!
hehehe

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Kind of the same sense of humor as the dogs...

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You DO see the resemblance, don't you?

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Love to all!
Have a 'wunnaful' Thursday!
As for me, I am going to try to nap a bit longer. Because I damn sure feel like I still have "The Dumb".

XOXO
Anne

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Originally posted to my Y! 360, Thursday September 25, 2008 - 03:58am (CDT)

Good Grrrrrief!

 

Casey's bed tag...
"Endoscopic UltraSound"
Not sure what the final "E" was for...
Maybe to tag her as an 'experiment'?

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A misnomer, this sign...

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Good Morning Everyone!
We are home from Mayo once again.
Sadly, no wiser than we left.

And I have been battling a migraine since our return.
Not fun at all.

****IMPORTANT:
If any of you received text messages from CaseyFace on Friday, please know that she was more than 'under the influence' after her procedure.
(Mad as hell, and very much misunderstanding what the doctor had told her)...

We left on Thursday...
... and during another new attack for her...
Knowing Mayo would do her blood work and let us know what was going on with her amylase and lipase counts.
She has not had any pain pills in a few weeks now, and has put herself through hell with that too.
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She slept for the most part after we finally found a hotel ~as did Punk.
(I say 'finally' ~because the fair was "happening" in Rochester, and there were no rooms anywhere).

Oh wait, yes there were... AND, we even had a choice!

Either we paid an ungodly amount to leave Punk in the car, or at another place, to sleep in one bed.
(A twin bed at that)!
hehehe
That's not going to work...

So on the phone with Casey's wonderful man. Greg googled everything for us, and found us a room at Stewartville. (Just a hop, skip and a jump down the road from Rochester).
I'd much rather be out of town anyway, so this was definitely not a problem.
I called there.
The people (Eastern Indian) were extremely difficult to understand on the phone.
But upon our arrival, were the most decent people I have ever dealt with in any hotel.

After getting settled in, (in our pristine and perfect room), we ordered from one of the town menus.
One pizza place offered Homemade Chicken Pot Pie.
Casey cannot eat pizza since her pancreas has gone haywire; so we both ordered a serving of their pie.
Casey was even bold enough to add some BBQ wings to go along with hers.
To say that these pies rivaled my own would be true. hehehe
OMG, but they were SO good!!!
Casey also had remarked that her wings were also the best she has ever ordered anywhere.
(She'd eaten about 4 bites of her pie before her pancreas violently objected to it, ~ so she was 'stuck' eating those wings)...

Punk simply drooled...
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They both slept until I woke them at 10:30AM. We had to be out of the room by 11; which worked out perfectly to get to Mayo for Casey's appointment at noon.
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The nurses were quite kind...
Mayo had a visiting doctor, (Clain), from USC who specializes in gastrointestinal stuff; a leading doctor on the pancreas.
He was also quite rude, not allowing Casey to say a word. When she did ask a question, he replied that she did not want to be telling him how to do his job.
WHAT?!?
All she did was ask a question of him!!!

So let's just get this over and done with.
First to sign a paper that authorized them to to 'use' her as a study patient.
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They had found her interesting enough to place her within this group.
blah blah blah.
For Pete's sakes, who the heck cares about all of this?
Just please fix her already???
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Whenever one gets poked in the pancreas, it sets off an attack. This has always been her reaction to her EUS procedures, or the ERCP's she has had.
Any probing really p*sses off her pancreas.
Friday was no different.
She returned to the recovery room in pain.
They gave her Demerol, (25 mgs.), which did not even touch her pain.
Then finally gave her a hypo of Dilaudid.
That worked, and we would be able to keep our appointment for her results across the street for 4:30.

We used the skywalk...
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At this appointment, her doctor, (Kisiel), tried to explain to her the possible scenario of nerve damage from Froedtert's surgeries; and the possible inability they would have to control her pain. At some point, the dilaudid really kicked in... and she got everything a little mixed up.
Reflect back to my note about her text msgs... At no point did he say she was an addict. Good grief, she has gone many months at times with no relief at all.
This is a very touchy subject for us both, especially given what July had thrown our way.

Back to Dr. Kisiel.
Her EUS was unremarkable. No calcium deposits etc. (I know too, that the good Dr Clain had made up his mind about her pancreas even before he went in and looked around).
One gets to 'peg' these certain personalities after these many years of watching, ~listening to the nurses and doctors; seeing/reading their body language (that may/may not betray their words).

And so, like I said before, we know nothing more than what we did before we left home.

She is still in pain, with no good explanations, or help, or relief offered to her.
I for one, would LOVE to be a fly on the wall if her doctor here would ever be in the same room with this Dr. Clain. After all his work with her here, and to have his lab results simply dismissed by Mayo.
They also threw out her bloodwork from the hospitals here because it wasn't on their scale.

We drove home that night.
I didn't mean to, as I had been up since 4 AM.
But again, there were no rooms within a couple hundred mile radius of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, because of the EAA Convention. (CLICK for info).

I was dog tired, and my head was just starting to act up. I dropped Casey off at her place. Punk and I came home to a hot stuffy house.

We will know more once she speaks with her doctor here, and has him all filled in. I promise to keep you all informed.

For now, it will be back to my quiet dark bedroom... Maybe a nap?

I hope you are all having a grand weekend!

XOXO
Anne

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Originally posted to my Y!360, Sunday August 3, 2008 - 09:22am (CDT)