Mom spent the night with me last night (so that Adam could stay with Anna overnight) and I discovered what I already know: that Mom is a much, much lighter sleeper than Adam (who has been here at the hospital all the other nights I’ve been here) is. Mom woke up with my every move. Adam has been sleeping through the night, sometimes sleeping in an hour or two later than me.

My throat, already irritated by the tube, is at such a painful level of irritation that I am reduced to whispers today. The throat lozenges (1 Cepacol throat lozenge every 2 hours), the ice chips (as needed) don’t even touch the pain, the irritation anymore. I imagine my throat inflamed and raw from the tube sliding up and down as I talk and breathe, constricted every time I swallow (the worst, the swallowing). The on call doctor came to talk to me this morning and I was told the standard party line, not anything they can really do, just hold on and get through this.

It really does feel like the worst kind of hell. I’m sure there are worse things but I personally have not experienced them.

On my first early walk of the day today with Mom I ventured, for the first time, beyond the patient rooms, down towards the main hallway of my floor. As I pushed my IV pole along and choked on the throat tube, I had this sudden visualization: ripping the tube out of my nose, unhooking (carefully) the medications from my PICC line, throwing the IV pole aside, and racing down the stairs, racing towards the great outdoors, off of the Stanford property, off towards home and everything else that I am missing in a most real and palpable way.

I was able to check this impulse. Remembering what would probably happen without the stomach suctioning was enough to give me pause.

The visualization I’ve spent the most time on lately has been one of food and digestion: I imagine beautiful food, imagine eating it, imagine my body doing all the normal stuff that one’s body is supposed to do with food. The end.

Of course, there’s also the poop visualization but perhaps I have already belabored that point.

I have a CT scan planned for at some point today. They want to check back in with the (diffuse) bleeding around the pancreas that was apparent on last week’s CT. It seems that there are one of two options here: that the bleeding will have gone away on its own (fingers crossed) or that it will have coalesced into a mass, into which they would be able to stick a drain, the idea being that blood in the abdomen is a not very good thing, and which may be the cause of my stomach distress (stomach putting everything on hold until that is straightened out?).

Carol is back in town, thank goodness. Not that I believe in any way that my own mother is incapable of taking care of all things Anna, but I feel relieved to know that there can be some dispersion of the responsibility. It’s just good to have some fresh horses here, so to speak. Also, Carol gave me some bodywork last night and I’m very hopeful that that will make a difference in getting my body to do the right thing.

I tried to talk to Anna on the phone yesterday (first time attempted since surgery) but she told Adam she was too busy. Hmm. Oh well.

The nights are the worst: devoid of distractions from all sorts of interior aches, these are the times that cause me to cry out with fear, with pain. Help me, oh help me.