The psychological effect of cancer is starting to take its toll. Holly is tired of being in the hospital not able to move, see her family or friends and generally in pain. I miss her. The logistics of managing a job and a family are amazing. Single moms (and dads), you deserve a Nobel prize or something. I don't know how you do it. The kids miss her. Only being able to see their mom for 20 or 30 minutes a day simply isn't cutting it. We are starting to feel like there is an evil reality show taping our lives. Just toying with the two of us to see how long it will take us to snap. Tonight was a painful night. They took out Holly's epidural earlier today and she is in a lot of pain, both from the stitches internally and externally. There is a lot of gas build up in new plumbing and it is causing horrendous cramping. The psychological toll of seeing your wife wretch in pain is pretty high. There isn't a whole lot that can be done other than beg the doctor for more pain meds, which were delivered while I was at the hospital. By the time I left, they had hit her pretty good and she was starting to feel slightly better. We (I) expected some cramping per Dr. Youns guidance. Neither of us expected it to be this severe. It makes sense, but it still sucks. The good news is that she peed tonight and can walk to the bathroom on her own. Two very minor victories, but victories none the less. Tomorrow, off to hallway & beyond!!!

Un Mes - Spanish Één Maand - Dutch Un Mois - French Ein Monat - German Ένας μήνας - Greek Un Mese - Italian 1 か月 - Japanese 1 달 - Korean Um Mês - Portuguese Один Месяц - Russian 一个月 - Chinese It's been one month since Holly's first surgery. Technically she is cancer free, but, per the other posts, it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride. She has spent 25 of the last 30 days in the hospital and still has at least 5 more to go. In any language, that is no fun. Since I'm American, translation by BabelFish.

8:00 – Saturday 5/26 Rather than recapping the whole day, Dr. Youn just came out and told Holly's mom and I that things went well. There was no blockage in the small intestine. He seems to feel that the whole thing was simply her body rejecting the ostomy. He has reversed it and everything looks good. He went through the ostomy to repair that. He also cut an incision in the belly, the same as before, just to check everything out. He didn't mess with anything, just wanted to confirm that nothing was wrong in there. It was all good. 10:30 - Holly is still in good spirits and glad that the ostomy bag is gone. We are still taking it day by day. Fingers crossed.

The following takes place between 7PM and 3:30AM. Doot, doot, doot, doot. It's actually been a couple of days, but I've not had the chance to write. Just when I thought that I could go a couple of days without writing about any of the drama in our lives, we hit a major problem. Holly came home from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon and there was much rejoicing. She was doing really well, relaxing, enjoying the new house and generally taking it easy. On Thursday, much of the same. Laying low. On Thursday night around 7, she started to complain about bad cramps in her stomach and that she wanted to lay down. Around 9:00 she was in a lot of pain. Around 11:00, she started to throw up, but, I think, was too scared and sick and tired of being in the hospital that she fought through it. At 12:30, she threw up again and said that the pain was worse than labor. She also had no, literally, output from the ostomy. Her belly was starting to balloon like a Sally Struthers poster child. In short, she exhibited all the symptoms of a blockage. We called the doctor who told us to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. One of the really nice things about our house that we should consider when we go to sell it is the proximity to the firehouse. In San Jose, when an ambulance is called, the fire station is the first responder. They can usually get there a bit quicker and have paramedics on staff. We live 3 blocks from the fire station and no sooner had I hung up with 911 then they were at our place. Her BP was in the basement, so they started on oxygen and sodium chloride, which is quickly becoming our life line. 9 people in our house taking care of her is really freaky. 'Don't forget to grab a sweatshirt. You know it gets cold in the hospital.' she hollered as they wheeled her in the ambulance. Always the care giver. Thankfully, somehow the kids didn't wake through the ordeal. It would have been really scary for them. Sadly, the dog didn't wake up either. So much for being a good guard dog. The ambulance left before I did, but we arrived at the same time. Danica would be proud. They immediately gave her some anti-nausea medication and some pain killers. Within 10 minutes, she was a totally different person. 3:00 AM – Holly's mom lives close by and was able to drive over at 1:00 when we needed her to watch the kids. I drive home to be in the house when the kids wake up. On the way home, I pass a guy out for a leisurely bike ride. That's odd. Follow Up - Again, like the previous 2 times we've been through this, they did CT Scans, X-rays, blood work, and some head scratching. She has nothing physically wrong with her, however, she is rejecting the ostomy. Dr. Youn has seen this before and elects to reverse the ostomy early. In the end, of course, they admitted her again. Gave her a ton of IV's and plan on doing surgery Saturday morning.

While I never like to reveille in other peoples misery, I did think that it was funny that Holly and I, in our almost matching Yahoo t-shirts, were given higher priority in the emergency room than a couple in matching Google t-shirts. I suspect that complications associated with colo-rectal surgery outweighs pretty much everything and I certainly wouldn't want them to take on our problems, but it was nice to see that Yahoo was given some much needed respect over Google, inadvertent or not.

The outpouring of support that we have received has been amazing. Everyone wants to do something to help out. Everyone, without fail, has asked how they can help. People we've known for years and total strangers alike, have all offered help. It is amazing, thank you. I really believe that support like this is what has helped humanity survive for 50,000 years. Here is where I fall down, I'm not good at asking for help, personally. I have no problem at all delegating at work. I suspect that a lot of people in this situation would be the same way. 5 months ago, we were a successful family. We've both done well professionally. Have two fairly well adjusted kids. We've worked hard and haven't had to ask for a lot of help, so candidly, we aren't good at it. We just don't know how to do it and we don't want to be a burden or an imposition on anyone. Our friends and family have done amazing things for us to help out. The majority of it uninitiated. If you know someone in a similar situation, but, like us, doesn't want ask, my advice is just do something. Don't ask them, because like us, they will say that they don't need it. Like Phil Knight said, just do it. Words can't express how appreciative we are for what has been done for us. If you are looking for creative ideas, here are some things that our friends have done to help:

Countless baby sitting hours. Not assigned or delegated out, just showing up and taking the kids. There are only 24 hours in a day and these breaks are priceless.

Meals - Yummy - Holly doesn't cook too much. I don't cook at all. A gourmet meal for me is toasting the PB&J. People showing up with dinner is a total score.

Dream Dinners and Waiters on Wheels - If you live in the Bay Area and have a job in a big corporate park, you're probably familiar with these services. I'd suspect that most major cities have something comparable. Essentially, you pick stuff off the menu of local restaurants and WoW delivers. Both my team and our mortgage broker got us gift certificates to these services. It has been great and beats cold cereal for dinner.

Massages - My team also bought Holly a very sizable gift certificate to SpaFinder. A national network of spas. We know that you aren't supposed to get a massage while you are on chemo, but the post treatment / pre-surgery massage is alright.

Baby sitting - It deserves a second mention.

Nanny service - Having the kids go to a different location every day was too hard on them and too much of a logistical nightmare for me. One of our friends has signed on to be our nanny. It is an unbelievable help.

Cleaning service - A friend called us yesterday and said that she and a bunch of Hollys friends chipped in to have a cleaning service come to the house. I came home to a spotless house and Holly will come home tomorrow to an almost spotless house.

Baby sitting - It's that good.

Golf - I got a great email from a good friend who suggested that I drop the kids off for the day and go play golf. I don't need to be asked twice.

Company - I saved this one for last. It is great to have company over, especially this past week with Holly being in the hospital. Holly not being in the new house that she and I spent the last year building is lonely & depressing. It is great to have someone come over and hang out and not talk about cancer for a couple of house.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. People have helped us move, helped with the house, helped with work. Like I said, I can't write down all support that we've received. I write all this not to boast about our incredible base of support. They are amazing and know that and don't want the recognition. I write this because, if you are reading this, you probably know someone going through something similar. Sadly, if you don't, you probably will at some point in your life. You probably really want to help, but don't know what to do. I write this because, hopefully, one of these suggestions will brighten someones life when they really need it most. I know that it is what happened for me.

I got home the other night to find a decent sized box on the porch. That's nice, someone sent a little care package. It's been happening a lot lately and its much appreciated. What to my surprise when I crack open that little card board delight to find our "Welcome To Your Ostomy" care package from Convatec. Our nifty little kit was filled with literature on how to take care of your stoma, samples of wafers, different types of bags (one piece and two piece if you must know), a nondescript black ostomy travel bag and, get this, a DVD, which I'm just certain is 12 minutes of eye catching delightfulness. Holly comes home from the hospital tomorrow and I'm looking forward to snuggling on the couch and watching the ostomy DVD. Having an ostomy is a bit strange and very awkward. For a lot of people, it is a significant change in life, it can be embarrassing and frustrating. It is really nice of Bristol Myers to send this out to new patients. The bags alone are fairly expensive and with everything, it's probably a $100 or so package. I have to say, though, I'm a bit concerned about the privacy issues associated with the hospital / insurance company sharing our information like that. But you take the good with the bad in these situations. I'll let you know how the DVD is.

In an effort to figure out what is wrong with Holly, the doctors have done all sorts of tests and have given her tons of medicine and then more tests to see how it is working out. When she originally came home from hospital, they gave her Lomotil to plug her up a bit so that food could be absorbed.  This obviously didn't work because she went into the hospital again where they upped the dosage a bit.  She got out and again, same results.  Back to the hospital. After doing tons of tests to see what was wrong, and subsequently came up empty, they opted to make a move that would make Nigel Tufnel proud.   They cranked the level of Lomotil up to 11.  This worked out really well, but clogged up the plumbing a bit.  They've turned it down a bit and for the last two nights, things have been fairly normal.

Output level - Normal Electrolyte level - Normal Sodium level - Normal Attitude - Better than normal, but this might be due to her general tiredness of being in the hospital and any ray of light is a plus.

If things go well tonight, there is talk of them taking her off of the IV tomorrow and then keeping an eye on her for a day or so.  If that goes well, she can come home!!!

Flickr had a great booth at the Makers Faire today. They take Polaroids and upload them with the tag you define. It is very cool. It was also a great opportunity for the kids and I to make a get well soon card. The kids look great and I look like I just got out of bed (I more or less did).

So to make things frustrating for us, no one seems to know why Holly isn't keeping nutrients in. Even hooked to an IV, things are still flushing out of her. There was some thought that perhaps she gave herself a stress induced ulcer, so they wanted to check that. This could have been simply a way to generate a couple of extra bucks, but that could also be my natural cynicism coming out. They told Holly that she couldn't eat at all today in order to prep her for the endoscopy. This went over like a turd in a punch bowl and as surgery backed up and her 4:00 appointment turned to a 6:00 scope, she started getting really hungry. Essentially she hasn't eaten since Tuesday, so she is literally starving. Again, if you're looking to lose weight, there are better alternatives than cancer. Tomorrow is another day and we get the results of the scope tomorrow. Smart money is on this whole thing being psychosomatic and her system just flushing itself because it knows something is wrong. Odds are slightly higher for stomach ulcer. Dr. Youn is reluctant to reverse the illeostomy too early due to increase risk of scaring internally and the risks associated with that. We simply want to get on with life. She doesn't necessarily mind the bag, it is the weakness associated with losing all of her nutrients that suck. Once we have that figured out, it should be semi-downhill until chemo starts.