Hospice doc came and went..

I have to say that the hospice people are amazing. They are so responsive, despite being so overloaded. The doc has been calling almost every day to check on Husband, and when he heard yesterday that the pain is escalating he immediately squeezed some time out of his busy schedule to come and see Husband today. He was here at about 1.45, and stayed for an hour. Talked through the plan of action for me to try and keep up with the escalation of pain, with input from Husband whenever the pain escalates. Spent time talking to Husband about life, hope, love, trials, etc, etc, etc. Amazing guy!

Other than that, today has been OK lah.... went for my 4th torture session today - came home completely wrung out and sweaty, but feeling quite chuffed with myself at the same time, that I have survived FOUR gruelling sessions in just one week. I would not have thought I could do it.

To add to the general cheerfulness, my sister came by for lunch, and she is always good company. Luckily we had finished lunch before the doctor turned up, so the timing was pretty good :-).

Now, what is the plan for the next couple of days? This evening at 5.30pm, I am putting on two new pain patches for Husband, and removing the old ones. These should last for 2 days. During this 2 days, the doctor wants me to also add on 2x30mg slow release morphine tablets, every 8 hours, and if this combined regimen brings the pain down drastically, then at the next change of pain patches, he wants me to put THREE pain patches on, and see how we go. The idea being to control the pain AND to reduce the number of pills that Husband has to take. For breakthrough pain, as always, take 15-20ml of liquid morphine.

It also helped a lot that he explained to us that, in situations with cancer patients with intense pain, there is no such thing as overdosing on morphine. Something that would knock me out completely, would have no effect on Husband, other than to bring down the pain. That was a relief to know!!

The side effects will be drowsiness and possibly constipation. Not a lot we can do about the drowsiness, but for the constipation he recommended any laxative based on the senna pod - either Bekunis or Senokot. Since we already have Bekunis (both pill and tea form), we will go with that if required.

So, we start today for the next round of trial and testing to control the pain. Keep fingers crossed and prayers going that the pain CAN be brought under control, and keep Husband in your prayers always.

Till next time, stay safe, stay HEALTHY!