A turn for the better....

Well, I'm relieved to be able to post some good news about Dan.

I stopped by the hospital last night and encountered an envigorated, infection-thwarting, bearded Dan the Man. After a week of exhausting challenges, Dan has made a marked improvement. I'll tell you more about what actually happened last week, but I want to be kind of dramatic about it, so skip down a few paragraphs if you want to avoid the filler.

It was a quiet night in the galaxy; too quiet if you ask me.... (oops, sorry, that's the opening line of my new novella)... So, I got to the hosptial last night at about 7pm and headed up to the sixth floor, a bit apprehensive about seeing Dan. As it turned out, he was in a new room, so I had to do some searching, and when I opened the door at the end of a long hall, the first thing that caught my eye was Dan's shoes. They were on his feet, which were crossed politely as he lay in the bed. "That's a good sign," I thought to myself (more on this later....). I was immediately greeted by Dan's Mom and Dad, who were talking not in whispers but in guffaws and chortles. "That's a good sign," I thought to myself. Dan was asleep when I got there, but Mom quickly (and loudly) woke him up so we could visit. Apparently Dan had been awake the whole day, watching TV and eating a Frosty and two bagels from Panera. I handed Dan a stack of emails that you, the loyal readers, had sent him and he dug in. He was very glad to hear from you all (keep the emails coming!). After Dan read through the stack of emails and his Mom read through the stack of emails, his Dad read the stack of emails aloud, which made for some fun.

Okay, so here's the scoop on what happened to make Dan so sick last week:
While dealing with his spinal headache "normal stuff", Dan began to experience two irregularities. One was an abnormal urge to throw up blood. The other was an unfortunate lack of an urge to poo. Because of the blood throwing up, Dan had to drink barium, a dye that shows up on a scan of some sort to indicate if there are ulcers or problems in the G/I tract. Well, the barium didn't turn up anything of note in the upper G/I tract. However, it did collect in Dan's small intestine and turn into "a brick of sludge" (as quoted from Dan's Mom, retired elementary school teacher). At about that same time, Dan got a Staph infection that sent his temperature soaring towards 103/104 degrees and generally messed up his body. And that's about the time that I visited him last week. He was in bad shape.

Okay, so here's the scoop on what happened to make Dan better this week:
Doctors removed the PCA from Dan's arm that was infected with Staph and began treating him with antibiotics. At the same time, they began giving him serious doses of all kinds of laxatives to try to get things moving downstairs (if you know what I mean). Dan's parents even started taking Metamucil and exercising regularly to encourage him to "go". In the end, a little care from Mom and illegal doses of Ex-Lax did the trick. It takes quite a bit of effort for Dan to make it to the bathroom (he's got his time down by :30 overall), so he leaves his shoes on for the journey. No one can pull off black shoes, knee-high socks and a hospital gown quite like Dan!

Now that things are looking up as far as these challenges, doctors can again focus their attention on formulating the correct dosage and mixture of drugs that will help Dan fight pain. Right now they have him on percocet (acetaminophen and oxycodone), which seems to cause general loopyness (sp?) and induce sleep. He's on a 6-hour cycle of percocet, and at hour 5 he was still pretty high last night.

An Aside
The weird thing about Dan's comings and goings with regard to consciousness is how quickly he adjusts to them. He'll wake up and immediately start a conversation with whomever is standing or seated next to his bed. And then, equally adeptly, he'll conk right off to sleep without missing a beat, almost as if he hadn't been awake. Whether conscious or not, Dan is unabashed and astute. (Thank you very much.)

Well, that's all I can muster up for now. I'll post more as soon as I hear more. I know that Dan wants to post himself as soon as he can; hopefully he'll be able to check his email this weekend.

Mark

Update on Dan - January 12

Hi to everyone out there who's been checking in on Dan's blog page. This is Mark Boys, Dan's buddy from his days in the Loveland School District.

Dan asked me to update the blog because he's back in the hospital, this time in Cincinnati at Bethesda North Hospital, and unable to post. There's a lot to update you on; here's the short version:

On the Wednesday before Christmas, Dan was working at Kinko's with his laptop computer. When he prepared to leave and lifted his bag into his car, he heard a weird POP in his neck. When he got home, he began experiencing intense headaches. After a few hours of pain, his family convinced him to head to the emergency room. Doctors and staff there discovered that spinal fluid was leaking through the glue that had been used to seal up the area where he had surgery at NIH. This fluid was just sort of hanging out underneath the scar on his neck. It caused him intense pain. Apparently it is akin to when a woman in childbirth gets a "spinal headache" due to a botched spinal tap. They attempted to remove it with a syringe, but after doing so more fluid leaked out.

So, Dan began his stay in the hospital, which has now extended to three weeks. At first, Dan was able to administer his own pain relief for the headache using a PCA, a little button he pushed (it looks like the buzzers contestants use on Jeopardy) to send drugs speeding to ease his aching head and neck. That was good until this week, when a Staph infection was discovered in the PCA line. So, now Dan is not only fighting this intense infection, but he is back to waiting on nurses to give him the proper doses of pain meds for his pain.

Unfortunately, Dan is also dealing with problems in his bowels (he may shoot me later for telling you this, but I'm willing to take that risk). Doctors in Cincinnati seem to think that one of his tumors has suddenly grown or shifted or something, and it is cutting off the use of his large intestine regions. That's bad news, because there's stuff building up in the small intestines. There's only one real possible option of dealing with that problem right now (a colostomy bag). Dan's father, Tom, is hesitant to head that route, so he's contacting doctors at NIH to get them in on the loop with all this.

So, that's what is going on. These last few weeks have been very trying for Dan's family, and Dan is wanting so badly just to be able to start the road back to recovery from surgery. It seems like every time he takes a step toward getting out of the hosptial, something else comes up. I know that Dan and his family would really appreciate your prayers for them, especially that the doctors can communicate effectively (between Cincy and NIH and just between all the doctors in Cincy....there seem to be eight or more specialists all working together), that the Staph infection will dissipate quickly, and that the situation with the intestines will be resolved with minimal invasion.

You can feel free to send emails to Dan (dans.tumors@gmail.com), but I'm not sure if I'll be able to read them to Dan. He's pretty much sleeping all the time right now. But at the very least I can print them off and take them to his parents. Dan is so amazing, because he's in such bad shape, but whenever someone comes to visit, he gives them his best energy, his full attention. Always asking how others are, thanking them for their visit. I mean, who is like this guy?

I'll be sure to post again when I know more.

Mark