Here We Go Again

This is a letter P sent our family and friends after I saw my doctor yesterday. I have been fighting a number of Urinary Tract Infections and Prostatitis for the past 8 to 10 weeks and as you will read I have yet another UTI and now a lung infection.

As most of you know on June 30 Phil had his last dose of Gentamicin. At that time we knew he had an infection in his lungs that was sensitive to Gentamicin but because of the changes we were making in Home Health agencies, it was decided to take him off all antibiotics and retest him to see what was happening.

Last Friday, we found out that the urine culture had come back with some new bacteria that he hadn't had before. Yesterday, the doctor's office called and said the doctor wanted to treat it with 2 oral antibiotics. Today we had an appointment with the doctor. It seems the new bacteria is enterococcus faecalis which is a very stubborn, antibiotic resistant bug.

Tomorrow he has another sputum culture done to see what is going on with his lungs. We should hopefully have some results on that by Friday. After they get those results, they will decide whether to remove his PICC line. It has been in 5 weeks and after 6 weeks, it needs to be removed. If he still needs IV antibiotic, he would have to have a new line put in.

This is getting very discouraging. The doctor said if this round of antibiotics (3 weeks of Macrodantin and Dycocycline) doesn't do the trick he'll need to see a urologist. It reminds us of the first year he had his trach when he had pseudomonas a. that kept recurring.

He's not feeling well and has been dizzy for the last 10 days. That hasn't stopped him from trying to get people to give him ice cream which he needs to avoid while on dycocycline. Please pray that nothing else is going on and that whatever all the infections are will finally clear up.

P

Ah Vacation

P was on vacation most of this past week. I must say that it was nice to have someone else rattling around the house for a change. P didn't do much on her vacation except relax and work on the 2000 piece puzzle we bought her for her birthday.

We did go out for lunch one day. P had received a gift card, from work for going above and beyond, to a local restaurant so one day we went out for lunch. After a leisurely lunch we drove south of town to a friend to drop something off. Our friend lives in a nice house but to get there you have to drive past some farm fields. So that was a nice way to finish a wonderful time having lunch with P. It's has been a long time since P and I have been to a restaurant.

At the end of P's vacation one afternoon we went to a local ice cream parlor. Last Christmas I received a present of a gift card to this ice cream parlor because the kids know I really enjoy the ice cream there. So once again P and I enjoyed spending time together slowly eating ice cream while sitting in ice cream parlor. It reminded me of when we were in college and the two of us would walk the couple of blocks to another ice cream parlor to get some ice cream. I really enjoyed those walks because that was the time when P and I were just starting our live together. We would walk holding hands and talking about many things. Things that we liked, things we didn't like, things that we wanted, things we didn't want and we talked about how we wanted to raise our family.

Now when we were having lunch and later ice cream we talked about how things had turned out. Some things have turned out how we wanted, some things have turned out differently and some things turned out in ways we never imagined.

Ah vacations. It is certainly nice to have the opportunity to get away from the pressures of work, to relax and have time to reminisce about the past and talk about the future.