Origami Cranes

An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone that folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy beasts , and is said to live for a thousand years. Over the past year Duke patients and families enduring the journey through the cancer experience have joined together to bring the 1,000 paper crane project to life.  To date over 3,000 cranes have been folded and are on display as a sign of encouragement. This joining of forces shows us that we are not alone.  Mine and Joe's sister-in-law, Sandy Okazaki, folded 25 cranes in Las Vegas and sent them to us to hang for Joe.  Each of the cranes has his name on them and they now join the other cranes in the lobby of the 9th floor which is the cancer floor.  Thank you Sandy, your love and caring for Joe is so greatly appreciated.

The cranes are so delicate and lovely.  Especially the ones made with the patterned paper.

Joe has been completely removed from all his tubes as of today.  No IV, no folley.  His pain level has increased, but most likely due to the fact that it has now been over 24 hours since the epidural was removed and his only relief are the 2 pain pills every 4 hours.  We walked a lot of laps around the floor this evening and he is currently sitting on the side of the bed tapping his feet.  Even after surgery, he can't keep from tapping his feet to the music in his head.  There are rumors that he might be allowed to go home tomorrow, but we are trying not to count our chickens before they hatch, so we will just wait and see!

5th Day after Surgery

This will be a really quick update as we are watching the Academy Awards and those that know Joe well know that this is his Super Bowl!  Today Joe had lots of visitors, both family and friends.  He has moved onto solid foods and has eaten well all day.  They took out the epidural late this morning, so no more morphine.  Now they have changed his pain meds to oxycodone pills every 4 hours.  The result, he feels the pain just a bit more than he has the last 4 days.  The end result, he only has 1 IV at this point.  Practically "disconnected"!  He walked 3 times, 3 laps around the floor each time.  

I did sneak in a few hours at home this morning, doing some laundry but mostly napping on the sofa (unintentional).  I guess if you are tired and you get comfortable, that's what happens!  Sort of messed up my morning plans however. Oh well.

Thanks to everyone who has called, emailed and visited.  You are helping to keep Joe's spirits high!

4th Day After Surgery

The 4th day after surgery has been uneventful but a good one.  Joe ate his popcicle & jello for breakfast, followed by a bath and then 2 laps around the unit.  Then back to the room where he sat in the recliner for a couple of hours.   During those 2 hours he had 6 visitors and really enjoyed the company.  Lunch came during that time and he had his popcicle & jello as well as juice and tea.  He was enjoying his visitors so much that I went downstairs and had my lunch.  He moved back to the bed just prior to my return for a little while and after all his visitors were gone, we went for another walk.  This time 2 laps around the unit and a quick trip down the hall and then we returned to the room.  He soon after had his IV changed to a different arm and since has been reading his Nook in bed.

Right after this photo was taken we heard the lovely singer who had toured the 9th floor last week down the hall from us.  When the song she was singing was over, I went out in the hall and motioned for her to come to our room.  She remembered us from last week when she sang  "Defying Gravity".  This week she suggested the theme from "Beauty & the Beast".  Her name is Jae Choen and she is a student at Duke who volunteers to go from room to room on weekends to see if patients would like to hear a song.

Thank you Jae.  You have no idea how much Joe enjoyed your song and how touched he was after you left.

It's dinner time now and Joe has Jello, Popcicle, tea and chicken broth.  I'm going to do my best to talk him into trying the broth.

Thank you to everyone's get well wishes and prayers, cards and letters!

3rd Day after Surgery

Joe slept very well last night considering the nightly interruptions.  The doctors started coming in this morning by 6:15am.  Throughout the day he say Dr. Tyler the surgeon who did the operation, the pain doctor, and a few other residents drifting in and out as they all seem to do.  Joe did 2 laps around the unit and journeyed out to the visitor elevators which is about equivalent to a 3rd lap.  For breakfast he had jello and a popcicle for lunch.  They brought him broth, jello and a popcicle for dinner, but his stomach was too upset to eat.  It's just as well since what he had had earlier in the day came back up soon after I got here at 6pm from work.  The nurse quickly retrieved some extra anti-nausea meds and within a few minutes he was no longer complaining of feeling sick to his stomach.  He sat up in the recliner for about 6 hours today and maybe that was just a little too much for one day.  Maybe tomorrow, he will have better luck keeping his meals down

Apparently he has talked a lot today as his voice is very weak and rough sounding this evening.  I "ordered" no more talking and so he has resorted to his own version of sign language and nodding.  Every now and then however, he forgets and says something.  Like right now commenting on the Jeopardy contestants small wager on final jeopardy.

Tonight will most likely be another early night for both of us.  Last night we were both fast asleep around 9pm..  At least tomorrow morning I don't have to get up at 6a.m. to get home/shower/change and get to work.  Maybe I will sleep in until at least 6:30am.

Day 2 After Surgery

He walked and sipped water & apple juice.  Those are the highlights.  Specifically, he walked 2 laps around the 2100 unit and sat in the recliner for about 3 hours.  They finally allowed him to start sipping some water and some apple juice, but only sipping.  If he continues to handle that, then maybe tomorrow they will allow him to start on some liquid food.  He says his pain levels are "pretty good" which translated means the pain meds are working.  He continues to run a slight fever but that appears to be expected.  He also continues to doze off constantly, even in mid sentence sometime.  I went on off to work this morning and managed to stay until around 3:30.  I don't know which is more exhausting, staying at the hospital or playing catch up at work.  It's a real toss up there!

Tonight is going to be an early night for both of us.  Hopefully lights out by 9pm.

Thank you to everyone who has prayed, sent get well wishes, and good thoughts our way.  A special thank you to everyone at Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church and to the staff and agents at The Home Team.  Each one of you is so dear to us.  We could never have anticipated such an outpouring of love.

The Day after Surgery

Joe had a restless night. Slept in between nurse visits for vitals, blood sugar level checks and moving him in the bed from side to side.  However, that meant that they were in doing something about every 30 minutes.  Amazing how bright the florescent lights in this room are.  Today the nurses did get him out of bed and sitting up in the recliner.  He was in a lot of pain getting up and soon after getting in the chair complained of nausea and they gave him the little pink kidney shaped container to hold under his chin.  Needless to say, that doesn't contain much, so after cleaning that up, they gave him a bath, changed his gown & socks and he settled in with a blanket to keep him warm.  He was still complaining about pain, so one of the doctors did come in and up his dosage.  He felt the effect within about 30 minutes and was no longer complaining.  He sat in the chair for about an hour before asking me to get the Nurse Assistant to help get him back in bed.  When Joe pulled back the blanket so he could start to stand up, he quickly noticed that his entire stomach was red and the gown was saturated with blood. The NA quickly, and I mean quickly, paged for Joe's two nurses, Katie & Martha.  Katie arrived as I fled the room (so much for being supportive huh?).  Seeing so much blood all over his stomach freaked both Joe and me out and I knew I would only be in the way so I just waited in the hall.  Martha arrived pretty quickly, Katie exited soon after only to return within about 2 minutes with one of the surgical residents in tow.  As it turns out it was just where the incision had been draining, but had pooled at the bottom of the dressing and during the activity of moving to chair and bathing, etc, the pooling had given way and thus the blood and ooze all over him.  They assured both of us, me in the hall a little freaked out and Joe in the room that this was perfectly normal.  The doctor removed the dressing, inspected the incision, they cleaned it and applied new dressing,  Joe was put in a new gown and back in bed within all of 20 minutes.

This happened about 45 minutes ago and since then 2 more doctors have been in, can't even begin to tell you what kind of docs, never seen them before, but they were all questioning him about pain levels, any problems, etc, etc.

Typing to calm down and think things through so please forgive misspellings.   Joe has just drifted off to a sound sleep for the first time today so I'm sure that within the next 15 minutes, a nurse or doctor is bound to come in and wake him up.  It always seems to happen that way.

Thank you for all the inquiries today about Joe.  I am trying to respond to as many as possible but it has been hectic thus far today.  If I don't respond to you, please do not be offended, sometimes it is just timing and sometimes it is just a bit too emotional for me.

Thank you for the prayers and get well wishes.  We are feeing the love.

Post Surgery Update

This is a very hard post to do so I will make it brief and just the facts as I know it right now.  The surgeon was unable to remove the tumor from Joe's pancreas due to it's attachment to the main artery running through the area. We knew from the scans that this was a possibility.  He did remove Joe's gall bladder as it appeared to be non functioning and may have been the cause of the 2 infections he has had in the last few months.  He also created a new connection from Joe's stomach to his large intestine.  This was done due to the fact that if the tumor should grow anymore, it could possibly cause an obstruction from where the stomach normally dumps into the large intestine.  So for now, he has 2 passage ways from stomach to intestine.  I think he said he also did something about constructing a new area for the bile duct that should keep the bilirubins from doing their up/down routine anymore, but I'm not to clear on that since the surgeon was drawing the diagram of what he had done on his blue scrub pants with a blue pen. There was clear evidence that the chemo & radiation had had positive effect on the tumor as there were dead cancer cells. Just not enough for what we needed.  Also, the surgeon said that there was no evidence anywhere of an spread of the cancer outside the pancreas. More chemo is in his future and them we will re-assess what our options are.  Joe is resting comfortably right now, though really doped up.  Until we see the doctor tomorrow, I can't really speculate on how long his hospital stay will be.  As for me, my emotions are so rattled right now that I think it's more numb than anything else.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be more coherent and have some more information.  For now, thank you for all your prayers and support.  As Joe has said on his videos, "Happy Trails".

Surgery Day....

The day started very early this morning with a 5:30am wake up from the nurse.  Joe showered using the special soap/scrub brush he had been given and slipped into his gown....and then we waited.  We should be really good at it by now.  First to arrive was Joe's sister Bettie and his mother.  Then came our minister, Jay Minnick and bringing up the rear was my sister Phyllis, and niece's Aimee & Sara.  We sat around and joked & laughed until they finally came for him around 11:30am. Up to pre-op and then they ran me out of pre-op about 12:45.  We were notified at 2pm that the surgery had begun.  So now we wait some more.

4pm report from the nurse is that everything was progressing as expected.  Open to interpretation, but I choose to believe the surgeon is working magic back there!

Twas The Night Before Surgery and All Through the Hospital......

..nurses and residents scurried about.  At least on the 2nd floor at Duke.  Joe's IV which he had had in his right arm since midnight on Thursday night began to leak this afternoon, so they had to remove it and put the cutest little band-aid over the hole.  About 15 minutes ago they came in to put a new IV line in.  An 18 gauge needle.  Pretty darn big needle.  But it's in the underside of his forearm rather in the elbow area like before so maybe he won't be setting off the IV machine all night like he has been doing since Thursday night.  My family arrived tonight to see Joe before the surgery and are staying at our house tonight.  Joe's family is driving over early tomorrow morning from Greenville, NC.  Joe INSISTED on a video of my family, so here is a quick one of them saying good-bye, followed by his phone ringing, imagine that- Joe on the phone- so we had to abruptly end it.

As you can see by the clock on the wall, it was already 30 minutes past visiting hours.  I hope my family makes it home and isn't being held by the fearless Duke Security downstairs being interrogated! :)
Please note in the video that Joe is in new fresh clothes (red shirt, grey sweat pants) since he was able to take a nice long shower this morning and shave as well.  .

All kidding aside, please continue to say prayers for Joe as he undergoes the surgery tomorrow and help guide the surgeon skillful hands to make it possible to completely remove the tumor.

Joe LOVES the cards from PGUMC

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church family!  You have totally made Joe's day!  Both of us love the cards!  We have so enjoyed reading the messages on the back.  They are totally cool!  

This really pepped up his spirits!  Thank you Jay for delivering and staying and visiting with us for awhile.  It was really thoughtful and appreciated.   And thanks for Jill and Renee visiting and talking with us this afternoon.

The most recent update on Joe is that it appears there is a really good possibility that the surgery will still happen on Tuesday. (as of 15 minutes ago with the most recent visit from the doctor)  Keep your fingers crossed!!!!!!!!!!

Joe on Sunday Afternoon at Duke

Just thought we would show folks that Joe is feeling well, looks good and is very good spirits.

Once he gets his food and his Sunday paper, he's like a whole new person!  Other than really missing being at church this morning --he was really looking forward to the choir's anthem- his only regret for the day was not getting his McDonald's sausage biscuit!

And then we went for a walk.  7 laps around the unit and then we veered off the beaten path.

Joe preferred the route out of the unit which is where the video is taken.