So, I’ve been home a few months now from the rehabilitation center. I’ve maintained my exercises every day. I have a few MRI’s since I’ve been home. One spinal MRI to monitor the fractures. Stable, thank God. A couple brain MRI’s. Also stable, thank God. I did have a fall about 6 weeks ago. Nothing major, just my knee gave out when I got up from going to the bathroom. I scooted my way back to my tv room. I tried like heck to get myself up but to no avail. I had to have the fire dept come help me up and back to the couch. My knee just gave out and down I went. Scraped my knee abit but that was all.
It’s been more of the same since I got home. Nothing really to update just a few stable MRI’s. I am thankful for that. I got on my laptop to write here and the updates for the laptop took 19 minutes and drained like 10% of my battery. How annoying.
I stopped taking the lasix and potassium. I hated how much I had to urinate on the lasix. I experimented and went from a pill a day to every other day. Then every couple days. I noticed my feet weren’t swelling like when I was in the rehab center. I told my oncologist and she was fine about going off these two. I also have tapered down my steroid, dexamethasone. When I got home I was on 4 or 5mg. Can’t remember which. I tapered down every 3 weeks by a half milligram. I got down to 1mg a couple of weeks ago and the vertigo was crazy. I messaged my oncologist and asked if I should go back up a half mg. She said that was fine and to let them know how I felt on it. If any symptoms came back to go to the er or urgent care. Luckily that didn’t happen. The vertigo has gotten somewhat better. Some mild weakness but nothing to write home about. Not like when I went into the rehab center.
I maintain doing my daily exercises, 3 walks, sit to stands, ankle pumps, exercise bands for my arms and marches every hour in the afternoon. My physical therapy ran out so I have to wait 30 days before I can be re-certified or whatever. Stupid insurance. I have to wait thirty days and have my doc send over new orders for PT. It’s annoying, but I will play by your rules.
I’ll get back to writing more often, just not a lot has happened. My tumor remains. The fractures I had surgery for have healed. I have new fractures in my T spine but no pain. I just get random muscle spasms in my back. I want to get off of these steroids but for now I am stuck at 1.5mg/day. My cats are still brats but that’s how they are. Chip has been wanting to jump on the tv lately; his new obsession. We have been locking him out of the room in the morning and that seems to help. A change of direction for him. I keep a couple of cat springs, which we call springles, handy to toss out of the room and switch his attention. Pancake decided it was a good idea at 1:54 this morning to knead with all four paws just above my knee and also on my shin. He’s nearly 17lbs. So he did this for like 10 minutes and left. He came back about 5 minutes later and resumed. I said you’re killing me, Smalls! I told my wife about it and she laughed and said now you know how that feels. It stunk. He’s such a big brat. Hope you are doing well.
Thanks for stopping by.
~Bruce
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