Jan 7

Hello everyone. Sorry I haven't been faithful about posting. The time gets away from me and I am losing track of days. It is crazy, yet peaceful here. Mark continues to decline a bit. If he were able to eat, I think he would be somewhat stable, but he is just so malnourished and can't use his gut at all for nourishment. He is still able to drink water and keeping up with his fluids for the most part and hasn't been nauseated or vomiting which has been an answered prayer for sure.

We started Mark on the IV morphine drip a few days ago to get his pain under better control. He seems to be better. On the second day, we removed the patches and went solo on the morphine. He has the ability to push a button and give himself extra doses as he needs it and then gets a continuous infusion as well. Well, the IV morphine bag went empty at 3:30am this morning and the pump started beeping. I jumped up to check it and sure enough, no morphine. YIKES!!!! I quickly slapped 3 patches on Mark and woke him to get him to take a pain pill since I knew he would soon be hurting and pretty bad. There was a little morphine left in the bag, so I figured out how to get the pump to run another couple of hours to get the remaining medicine in him and then we waited to get in touch with hospice. We now have a plan to avoid this happening again. It took a bit to get Mark comfortable again today, but he looks better now, in fact a little too sleepy. I think I need to take the patches back off.

Funny story and those of you who know Mark well will like this one. Through it all, he hasn't lost his humor. Julia, Mark's hospice nurse, was over to start the morphine drip a few days ago. She had to access his port through the skin with a needle. She was cleaning it off and talking to me and told Mark "there's going to be a little stick" but all the while Mark's laying there with his eyes closed like he's in la la land and not moving, so we keep talking. All of a sudden, Julia sticks Mark with the needle and he yells out with this loud booming scream "OUUUUCCCCHHHHHHHHHH". It was so loud and he sounded like he was in agonizing pain. Julia jumped back and Mark had this big grin on his face and said "ha ha just kidding". Julia and I started laughing at him. He is so funny sometimes.

Mark continues to have periods of confusion from the medicine and dehydration in combination with liver failure. He is very yellow. Most of the time he seems pretty with it, but out of the blue he will just say the weirdest things or start whispering like he's talking to someone who's not there.

I worked Tues, Wed and today as partial days in the office. It seemed to work out okay. It is really hard to leave Mark right now. I am just playing it by ear. The kids started back to school this week and seem to be doing okay for the most part. Brent and Kathy are here and are caring for Mark while I'm at work. That can keep you busy. I know they enjoy spending time with him though.

Thanks to all of you who continue to read this and pray for us and support us through this battle. Pray for all those battling cancer out there. God bless!!!!!