Mom and dad have gone to the YMCA in Escondido for many years. Monday, Wed, and Friday are gym days, so today being Wednesday was a day for the gym. Mom decided she wanted to do a little bit of a workout. Well actually I sort of misunderstood and thought she just wanted to use the stretch machine to get her stretch on. Turns out she wanted to do a little more than that. I helped her get onto a couple machines and made sure she was using them safely. She then wondered aloud if she should try to do a few steps on the treadmill. I told her no way, it just wasn’t safe yet. Dad was on the treadmill himself and did .3 miles. Pretty good for him. That was only the second time he had been on the treadmill since finishing treatment. I then walked mom down to the breakroom where people gather to drink coffee and chat and then went back to do my work out. I do Lat Pulldown, chest press, tricep press, bicep curls. I also work my legs and do ab crunches. After doing the slow strength training, I move onto cardio. They have elliptical machines, treadmill and bikes (both upright and recumbent). The elliptical machine feels strange and hurts my back so I don’t do that one, the treadmill is fine until I stop it and then I get a funny feeling of still moving forward that I do not like, so I do the bike. I started out on the recumbent bike and would prefer to do that, but biking is boring and the upright bikes have a an interesting program. So I switch from the recumbent to the upright. It allows me to do actual courses and has timed leaderboards and a display that isn’t just dots to represent the course. It is more like a video game. So we all had a work out and it was good.
Later in the day Mom had an appointment with the oncologist’s nurse practitioner. Neither my mother or father have much of mental capacity at this point. They cannot focus, it is a bit difficult for them to verbalize their thoughts and their memories are kaput. So my dad asked me to go in with my mother when she sees the NP so that I could make sure they discuss everything that needs to be discussed and to make sure that any appointments or instructions are written down and remembered. The role of caregiver gets a bit more involved now I suppose. Anyway, we got in there and they took her vitals. Her O2 saturation must not have worked right the first time because the reading would have pretty much meant she was dead. So they took the reading again and it was better now, not great, but better at 94%. After the nurse assistant was done getting vitals, the NP (Cathy) came in to go over the latest lab work results and discuss anything new.
We discussed the feet swelling, which the oncologist has previously said he was going to get her on Lasix instead of HCTZ. We also discussed her weakness and that I was very concerned about the risk of falls. I asked if they were going to do another blood transfusion (I forgot to mention in a previous post that after her first chemo, they gave her a blood transfusion to bring her blood counts up), but the NP said her blood counts were normal so there would be no reason for another transfusion at this time. The NP said the unsteady footing was probably from the brain lesion, but I don’t think that is it. She had the brain lesion before the chemo and it wasn’t until after the chemo that she became really weak. The NP measured the liver mass by way of palpation, but couldn’t distinguish any change in size that way. Everything else seemed to check out ok. Unlike my father, my mother has not lost her appetite and is eating well. We got her next chemo appointment setup.
Before leaving there, we also discussed my father’s situation with the NP. My father has been out of treatment for a little over a month now and is not showing any signs of improvement. He coughs alot and with vigor, he is short of breath after standing for a few seconds, is shaky when doing anything physical like getting dressed and is always cold and shivering. The NP said we should get an appointment setup for him with the oncologist to discuss this and see if there is anything that can be done. We are also waiting for an appointment with the pulmonary specialist to see if there is some inhaler or something they can give him to relieve this cough. Personally I think he has little desire to get better. My guess is that he is thinking if his wife dies then there will be little reason for him to be around and well. Hopefully he can find some reason to get better.