Rough Night

I am never really surprised by the turn of events that has become our reality.

Brian has had a rough night. It started around 11:30 p.m. last night when he decided he was ready to move from the chair to the bed. Usually when he says he's ready, it means sometime coming up in the next few minutes. But this time he was very restless and was complaining of his lower back hurting. He said it had just started, and felt like a grabbing pain, and also included the fronts of both of his thighs. I got him moved right away and gave him pain medication. He only takes breakthrough meds about every 8 hours, and it was time. We hoped that might do the trick, and that maybe he was just stiff from being in the same position. I changed his bandages, and by midnight, he was just in tears. We tried everything...heat pack, cold pack, shifting legs, moving the bed up and down, turning him...everything. I gave him some more breakthrough meds in hopes of maybe getting on top of it. Within a few minutes, he was complaining of a terrible headache. I've told him all along that I will always call the nurse if he wants me to, and even if I don't think we should. He thought we should and we talked it through. I knew they would have him take more breakthrough before anything could be done about the pump level. The long and short is that I did call hospice around 1:15, and we decided for him to take another 1/2 dose of meds, then a full dose in 3 hours. By then I had also given him some anxiety meds (he freaks out with any new pains, understandably), and something to help him sleep, and he was calming down. He said his legs and back were feeling better, but his head was feeling worse.

I gave him a dose of meds at 4:15 and 7:15 (not sprung ahead yet!), and he is just wiped out. I took his temp and it has been good all night and all morning, but just now it was 100.2. I tried to look down his throat but he didn't open his mouth wide enough. I wonder if he might have something. He says now that his head hurts a little, he just is so tired...again, likely because of the onslaught of drugs that he wasn't used to. Now I've backed the pain meds off to every 6 hours instead of every 3, and we'll see about how this works.

The girls have been great this weekend, super helpers..especially Rachel. That has helped my sanity.

Mary is coming around 6pm to check on Brian and change his cassette, so I'll be happy to see what she observes.

Jenni