I am closing up these days and don’t think that will change till I get the high-caloric bag back and operate on something like 1000 calories again. As it is I’m operating on 400. You can probably see that’s not enough. It’s taking me everything to write this. God I’m going to miss you guys but hopefully I’ll be back.

water!

Practically all I want these days. That taste has replaced the Whopper as my ultimate crave. Hey, luckily I can have it, but smaller than the real gulp-sized amounts I want to throw down my throat. This is what I did today. Throw it down my throat. I’m not supposed to do that. But the worst of it seems to be I throw up a little water and my tube runs faster with the water. Oh yeah I also got my vitamin C IV drip for the third time at this place. Results? Beat me. Don’t feel any genkier, any bit healthier, I’m just exhausted from all the everything that is not sleep. But my wife, eep, I think the stress of all this work before her work, today it really got to her. Didn’t help we were late in getting back, didn’t help I fell again because I didn’t follow instructions properly. After helping me to my bedroom door, she gave me my small popsicle, my water, and cellphone and hurried to work. Some people might think it cruel, I think this is the flip side to all the things she does, many which are in the background to what I see everyday. She came back from work to help me back up, and that’s why I’m writing right now, then she returned, because there’s a lot she has to complete. That’s where she is right now.

And the biggest insult is I’m thinking of giving up. Everything exhausts me, I don’t think about my story much any more (Jake!), the substance I dream about consuming is water rather than a Whopper as I think I might have said, and I fear going up and down those stairs. I mean I came up here to die, basically, before all this hope stuff set in. But then again, I’m writing this blog post I couldn’t have done in the hospital.

That’s got to count for something, right?

Not a furlough, not a what-if, not an imaginary story. I was finally released from the hospital into the hands of nurses and IV drips (which won’t be as round the clock) and a flight of stairs I fell on as I reached the top. Got nothing for legs (hold on let me see if I can do this one exercise thing… yes, I did thank you very much so I’m better), but maybe the decline isn’t a trend, just this afternoon. I’m already down enough. I think as any of you who read this know, haven’t had much energy lately, and then there’s the bad back which I made worse sitting up to blog. You have seen the results. Now that I’m home I promise… okay okay, I don’t know what’s going to happen now that I am home. And the only reason I'm home, sitting up in my chair and not still on the floor is my wife, obviously. Not going to forget her again. You know she's the one that changes the bags of my IV drip, injects other medicines into a little tube I have that goes into my stomach, and helps move me around so I'm not virtually paralyzed. So... Keep up the blog as long as I can as I head for a miracle cure or the end of my time. Hoping for the former even as the prevalent exhaustion whispers into my ears for the other side. 

Hope after all this absence you’re still with me.

Home

For another furlough and everything thanks to my wife. Really I got to start giving her more credit, like the way she transfers everything from my hospital room to my bedroom, and we’re talking my computer my clothes, water bottles, pads, my man pampers, the way she negotiates with them and handles the paper work. Then leaving she wheels my wheel chair, folds it into the car and yeah, drives me home. Me? I sit on the bed, I sit in the car seat. I make an effort to get up, which I am usually not successful on my own. Oh yeah, she also helped me piss into a piss bottle so I wouldn’t piss into pants. But I did climb up the stairs with her pushing me all the way. Some of that was my muscle effort.