Behrman's Boot Camp (9/20 update)

Today Mom got to leave ICU and move to a regular room! She's now on a surgical oncology unit, which apparently is known to Dr. B's patients as "Behrman's Boot Camp." He wants her sitting up in a chair during the day and walking the halls at least a couple times a day. Less than an hour after she got to her new room, he walked in and said, "What are you doing in bed?" And, sure enough, a therapist came in about 45 minutes later to help her get up and "just take a few steps", and that ended up being a walk down the hall with a walker! The therapist went on and on about how great Mom's doing. Mom sat in a chair from about 1pm to 6:30pm and did another walk up and down the hall before climbing back in bed. Dr. B doesn't play. 

She still has her NG in her nose (and esophagus and stomach). Dr. B said he might take that out tomorrow. He did let her have some ice chips today and they hurt her throat, but they didn't come back up!

We still have no results on the lymph nodes that were removed. Dr. B said it'll be a day or two on those. We're praying so hard that they'll be cancer-free. If they do show cancer, however, at least they're out of her body. That will just mean that the cancer was starting to spread, so  Mom will probably need chemo when she's recovered from the surgery. It would be nice to do the 3rd round of cancer with no chemo, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. 

Meanwhile, we'll keep working on recovering from 8.5 hours in the OR. Mom's pain is still being managed well, and tonight her pain med was switched to one that shouldn't make her so drowsy. Right now she's still sleeping most of the time and doesn't feel much like talking, so we continue to ask that visitors be limited to family only so she can rest as much as possible and save her energy for healing (this is the speech I give my NICU families - turns out the adult world isn't so different after all). I'll let you know when we lift that ban. ;-)

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Fyi . . . I took Kia to the doctor after school today just to get her throat checked out (and because it sounded like fun after the weekend we've had, of course). I was pretty certain she wasn't sick, but I just couldn't let her come see Mom until I had proof. No strep - just sinus trouble. She was cleared to come visit and finally got to see her mama for the first time since surgery! (She was too young to visit her in ICU - a rule I'm totally okay with!) We had the following conversation when she got to the hospital room . . .

Tekia: How does Mom pee?

me: (pointing to the catheter) She has this tube that gets the pee out so she doesn't have to get out of bed.

Tekia: WHAT?! Lucky!

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Thanks so much for all your continued love and prayers. God hears and continues to be faithful. So thankful I'm on His team! (Because what fun is it to be on a losing team anyway?)

P.S. You may have noticed that I've added a "tricia" label to all posts about my mom. I know that many, if not most, of you are friends of my mom and are coming here just to check for updates on her. I hope that someday soon I'll have time to do some catch-up posts about non-cancer-related topics like baby pictures and trips to Spain. So, for the Tricia fans, if you ever come here and the first thing you see is not a post about Trish (which probably won't happen anytime soon!), feel free to scroll down and click on the "tricia" label on the right side of the page. That will pull up only the posts about my mom (do this rather than using the search box up at the top; it's not working right).