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What a Difference a Day Makes!

What a difference a day makes! My surgical wounds are coming along beautifully, I got to spend an hour or so at the office yesterday and I got many hours of blissful sleep last night. The sleep was deep, healthful and pain-free. Nothing short of spectacular!

Have you ever been to Bed, Bath and Beyond? Jill and I took a short shopping trip there yesterday to see if we could find me a new pillow situation. Wow, do they have options!  My good friends and my wife have joked recently about my rather wacky pillow requirements during my nightly rest. Until yesterday, I have slept with a carefully thought out combination of 5 pillows, one of which to Jill’s consternation was covered with a pillow sham.

With three under my head, one to wrap my arms around, one fluffy one between my legs and also the cpap mask, you can just imagine how difficult every turn used to me for me in our bed. If you add incisions, back pain, insomnia and post-surgical weakness to the equation, my nightly sleep machinations have almost required a slide rule.

Yesterday, some of that changed. Last night I slept like a dead man with only one pillow under my head. I still clutched one and had two between my knees, but I’m going back to BB&B some time this weekend and I plan to be an only 3 pillow guy by Monday night. I think some of what has been driving my insomnia over the past fews days was this complicated pillow regimen. How many of you are hiding weird quirks with pillows or some other OCD tendencies? The older we get, the odder we get. Although I got an early start and I’ve decided to tell stories about my quirks. I’m taking one for the team, folks. I’m betting you’re feeling like you’re not a nutty as you once thought. Ol’ Mike Venable, now he’s really a nut!

I was able to determine that Dr. Dan George is still practicing at Duke in spite of the difficult time Dr. Pippas seems to have had getting in touch with him. Noreen McClain is a childhood friend of mine, who married Chick Lockerman, a high school mate from Hardaway High. She is a clinical research coordinator at Duke Eye and if we should happen to need to go to Duke for treatment, it will be nice to have people we know there for a support network.

When Dr. Gorum came to talk to my family after my surgery, I was still mostly unconscious. And since I haven’t had a post-surgery follow up with either Dr. Gorum or Dr. Pippas, I am blissfully ignorant of the particulars of any immediate concerns about where cancer remains in my body and what might be done to rid me of it. My job right now is to heal and get my strength back. We’ll meet with the docs next week and start making plans for future treatment options.

The other thing that I’m happy to report, especially to my office mates who saw me kind of down-in-the-mouth yesterday, is that the addition of the 10 mg dose of Celexa has reached a level in my system that is giving me a much clearer head. I’m frankly astonished at how my anxiety level has dropped. I feel perfectly normal, no nausea and the insomnia seems to be under control. I’m just feeling better inside my own skin. Honestly, I haven’t felt this good since the day before Dr. Mike Lake told me I had cancer.

Today, I’m working on drinking plenty of water, walking around inside the house and outside with our dog, Dixie. Today, I feel like I’m on the mend. Today, I’m watching football games and smiling a lot. It feels good to smile.

Go Dawgs!

September 3, 2011 | Tagged With: Bed Bath & Beyond, Celexa, Chick Lockerman, Dr. Andrew Pippas, Dr. Dan George, Dr. Mike Gorum, Dr. Mike Lake, Duke Eye, Jill Tigner, Noreen McClain| Filed Under: kidney cancer | 23 Comments

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