Sunday, October 30, 2010

Just when I thought nobody was reading the blog anymore, four friends over this past week said they had checked it and were eager for an update on the old man. So, here goes, folks.
It's good news: Tommy is still working his way through his nine lives. And we are finally enjoying our "summer"...I say that because the actual summer months proved to be yet another trial for us. Within weeks of Tommy getting home from his two months in rehab following the spring gall-bladder crisis, Tommy had a totally unexpected "heart event" while pedaling on his exerciser. This culminated in another ambulance ride, with me following in my car behind--this time, all the way to Washington Hospital Center in D.C.--to get two stents installed in Tommy's lower anterior descending artery (the artery that is also called "the widowmaker"). (The cardiologists at the major regional hospital in Salisbury, Md., where Tommy was taken first, said it was too dangerous to try to do the procedure there.) We were supposed to be two nights in D.C. and ended up being there five nights. It's a terrific hospital, but the experience was exhausting for both of us. Thank heaven our good friend Amy Smith lives only a mile down the street and welcomed me with a chilled glass of white wine every night around 9 when I stumbled in. While I sat staring at the kitchen wall, she rustled up homemade burritos for me...and listened to me babble. I keep saying it--thank heaven for our friends.
When we got back home, Tommy began another stint of home health care, plus we had weeks of juggling his new drug regimen with the help of the home-health nurse, appropriately named Angel. We got through it all with the help of Gaie (who drove out for a week to help me get back on my feet), Tommy's wonderful Dr. Giddins, my brother Marshall, and Patti and Irv.
Now things are on an even keel once again. I tell Tommy that he's like an old classic car that's being restored; everything is getting replaced and pretty soon he'll be like new. Getting the stents in his artery has definitely made a difference in his awareness or whatever the word would be; we have longer conversations and his episodes of confusion are less frequent.
So, at this point, Tommy is working his way back to where he was in the early spring, before the first of the two unplanned hospital visits. This means that he walks (with walker and me helping) to the dining room every morning, and he pedals daily (although not as vigorously as he did before the stents were put in). We often go out in the afternoon for errands. We have a wonderful woman named Billie who hangs out with him once a week while I go out.
This week, Marty Wolfe visited for the first time since last Thanksgiving, and he told Tommy that he seems much improved since his last visit. Thanks, Marty.
Oh--and on November 4, Tommy turns 75! We'll have an open house for him next Sunday, with the usual suspects stopping by. Give him a call this week--he would love it...302-539-8079, or drop him a card (P.O. Box 1427, Ocean View, DE 19970). And come visit!

May 22, 2010

Great news: Two days ago, I attended the second care-plan meeting for Tommy at Atlantic Shores rehab. The social worker told me that Tommy has been meeting the goals that were set for his therapy, and that if he continues to progress as expected, he will be discharged on Memorial Day. Just in time for us to enjoy summer. My brother, Marshall, is coming for the weekend, and Patti and Irv will come by to welcome Tommy back home. I picture us all sitting on the back deck, with Penny and Sandy running around looking for handouts. We'll watch the jet-skiers dodge the go-fast boats out on the creek--always exciting viewing, especially on sunny holiday weekends--and we'll take turns lobbing tennis balls for the dogs with the Chuck-it that Diana and Larry gave us (truly the best dog toy ever invented).
Tommy has been working hard in therapy and now is almost able to walk the same distance (with a walker and an assist) that he was able to walk prior to the gall-bladder surgery. He can lift almost all of his own weight during transfers. He has gained back some 12 or 15 pounds--he now weighs 154 lb.--helped along by the high protein "Magic Cups" he wolfs down and the daily power drink that I've been bringing him (low-fat yogurt, ground almonds, fresh fruit and a dash of vanilla). Speaking of wolves, he is now joking with the caregiving aides (some of whom are floored, because they had gotten the idea over the first few weeks that he was unable to talk). The other day he told one of them to "climb in bed with me" as she was helping him lie down. He's baaack.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Yesterday was kind of hectic--in the morning I went to Harris-Teeter (always a pleasure) to grab ingredients for some edible "puree diet" food for Tommy, since pureed food and "thickened" liquids are basically yucky. Tommy won't even touch the gluey liquids. My approach is just to go with delicious soups, instead--at least they're "intended" to be pureed. I mean, pureed pancakes? Please. I got him lobster bisque and then ran it through the blender at home just in case there were any little chunks of lobster, and he gobbled it up at dinner. For tonight I have made gazpacho.

Just before dinner I met with the nutritionist and, like the head of physical therapy, she is young and extremely bright and nice. Good sign. They had Tommy in the gym when I got there around 4--a Filipino guy named Peter, who seemed very good and was also very warm to Tommy, was working with him at the parallel bars and got him to stand for maybe 20 seconds (with a lot of support), so that was good.

At dinner Tommy was extremely tired. A friend of his, Frank Carr, came to visit right after dinner, and also the facility's doctor arrived at about the same time. The doctor turns out to be Dr. Raj, who was Tommy's primary-care doctor until last summer (at that time, I changed Tommy to Dr. Giddins because Dr. Raj was basically unavailable when Tommy was having a gallstone emergency and was being led around the barn by all kinds of unfocused specialists' assistants...we couldn't even get to the specialists). But we always have loved Dr. Raj, so we are very happy that he is on the case while Tommy is at Atlantic Shores rehab because he knows Tommy very well.

Also, yesterday Tommy's lungs were making a lot of noise so they gave him an X ray and found that there is a small area in his lower right lung that they think is pneumonia, so Dr. Raj has prescribed a stronger antibiotic than what he has been getting.

I asked Tommy at bedtime if he feels comfortable and secure at this new place and he said yes. One day down...more to come.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Well, as Diana recently told Janis, Tommy has nine lives. A week ago
Tuesday he was raced into emergency surgery at Atlantic General
Hospital in Berlin, Md. (a very good hospital) for removal of a
disintegrating gall bladder. For two days after that, he was "septic"
and fighting for life in the ICU. He had so many tubes and wires going
into him he looked like a robot. Two days after surgery, his system
finally kicked in as his white blood cell count started to fall and he
was able to begin to keep up his blood pressure without being pumped
full of fluids. His recovery was steady after that. He is now on a
puree diet and his swallowing is improving daily, so he should soon be
able to handle actual "food".

Yesterday afternoon he was moved to the residential rehab place, which
is in Millsboro, a 20-minute drive from the house. The docs can't say
exactly how long he will be there, but that it will probably be a
matter of weeks rather than months. He is still very tired and
sometimes confused, but when he's awake he's often alert and hits me
with the occasional zinger. Example: Yesterday at lunch time, when I told him
I was going to run down to the hospital's cafeteria to grab a bite, he
said, "Check and see if there's any beer in the fridge." (He hasn't
had a beer in more than two years, of course.)

Tommy has a lot of work to do to get back to where he was before the
gall-bladder surgery--he is unable to stand up on his own, so even
transfers are being done with the help of various mechanical lifts--but
he says he wants to come home and that he's ready to buckle down. He
will have therapy sessions in the morning and afternoon. I will be
with him for dinner every evening, so a good time to call him (on my
cell phone--302-344-8652) would be from about 6 to 7 (i.e., right after
dinner).

If you want to send him a card, here is the address:

Atlantic Shores Rehab Center
231 S. Washington St.
Millsboro, De. 19966
Attention: Tom Long, Rm. 703D

Thank you for all the support and good wishes. I know it means a lot
to Tommy to hear from his family and friends. (Me, too '-) ~Connie

Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009

This has been a busy week, as my family is visiting. Tommy continues to hold his own in the gym and at the dinner table--good walking, good eating, generally good all around. As I have said so many times before, simple peace and "not too much happening" has shot to the top of my list of "good news" in the past year and a half; and therefore, I wish all of you simple peace as a baseline for 2010 and if you care to embellish on that, go for it. And, to all of you, thank you for the calls, cards, e-mails and visits over this year; we are always so happy to be in touch with you.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Lest anyone think that Tommy Long has lost his sense of humor or his, shall we say, drive, consider his response to a question this morning. It was when we were doing his morning relaxation exercise. This occurs while Tommy is still lying in bed, and it consists of me telling him to send a message from his mind's eye down to each part of his body; and the message is, "relax". We start with each arm; then the legs; then the bladder; then the intestines (aka what I call his "sh*t mine", which is to say that I ask him if he wants to tell the boys who are in there shoveling the sh*t for him if he has a message for them, to which he usually responds, "Yeah...thanks, boys; take five"); then his stomach; then the guys plucking on his vocal cords; and finally his schwaz. So this morning I asked him, "Do you have a message to send to your schwaz?" "Yeah," he said, lifting his head and looking down there. "Find a woman."

Thanksgiving Day 2009

We are still enjoying the fall. We've been in touch with lots of family and friends in the past few weeks. The nor'easter earlier this month gave us a scare with its high flood tides, but although the house was totally surrounded by water and we had to move out for two days (thank you, Irv!), the house stayed dry. Tommy is still going to the Tidewater gym two mornings a week, where Bob Cairo, a prince among men, keeps an eye on his progress. We had a lovely day today, with my brother serving as turkey sous chef and a visit from Marty Wolfe, one of Tommy's former boatyard employees. Marty got a huge smile from Tommy when he said, "You look good, Tommy--almost as good as me!" Everything seems to be going our way right now, and for that we are most thankful. Amen.

Friday, November 6, 2009

It's been a really relaxing and beautiful month since the last entry in this blog. The bright, sunny days are growing steadily more bracing, but that's okay because we have the firewood ready. Tommy still goes to Tidewater "gym" two mornings a week, where he rides the bike for a good half-hour and Bob Cairo walks with him using the walker. We will soon get back to walking on the back porch--as we were doing before the great gall-stone disaster set Tommy back for the summer. So, we are slowly but surely working our way back to where Tommy was in the late spring. Two steps forward, one step back does seem to be the way of it. Tommy turned 74 on Sunday; we had a dinner party for him with everyone bringing a dish to supplement the leg of lamb that I roasted for him. He heard from many family and friends, both with phone calls and cards, and had a wonderful day.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

We are enjoying the fall so much--fall as in autumn, that is, not as in down you go. Good news, too, from Bob Cairo, Tommy's primary therapist at Tidewater Physical Therapy right here in town, where Tommy and I have gotten so much help. Bob is going to let Tommy come twice a week on his own dime--a very reasonable charge--now that Tommy's prescription for physical therapy has run out. Patti and I are going to throw a big cook-out later in the month, and I'm thinking Tommy could help out by serving as judge for the pumpkin-carving contest.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Tommy has continued to get back up to speed, and in a week or so he should be back to about where he was on Memorial Day weekend, when he went to the emergency room as all his looming problems came to a head. He is now again able to take all of his weight when doing transfers, and soon he'll be walking those dozen or so daily "laps" on the porch with the walker and me assisting. Bob Cairo and his staff at Tidewater rehab have done a great job helping Tommy; he may actually have only another week or two at Tidewater before his prescription runs out. Then we'll be on our own again for therapy, but I have learned a lot from the Tidewater folks so we'll be ready.
Yesterday evening we went to the VFW for the post's last crabfest of the season. It was Patti's birthday party, so we had a tableful of pickers with flowers and a cake to top it off. We sat at the far end of the enclosed porch, with a fabulous view of the sunset over Indian River Bay. Patti's neighbor Gordon very kindly picked crabs for Tommy, allowing me to kick back for a while. It was a very pleasant way to end the summer.

Monday, September 21, 2009

We had a hunky dory weekend. Tommy is getting back to where he was before (aack) Memorial-Day-in-the-Hospital weekend; and we are in the midst of those incredibly bright, breezy early fall days; and, to top it off, we celebrated both Patti's and Irv's September birthdays on Sunday with a feast supplied mostly by Patti, with me throwing in the corn and tomatoes. We spend several hours a day just dozing on the sun-warmed back deck with the dogs. More days like this, please.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Tommy is still struggling with the g.i.-tract problem; it has caused him much off-and-on discomfort and also kept him from two of his three physical-therapy sessions this week. Yesterday, Irv and I took him to see Dr. Giddins, who told me to continue with the regimen she recommended last week, plus to give him one packet of MiraLax every morning. She also ordered an X ray; so, when we left her office, I took Tommy down the street to the Beebe Imaging outpost, where the staff were wonderful and fun, too. We will see what the X ray shows and also how Tommy does through the weekend.

September 8, 2009

Just when things seemed to be looking up, Tommy came down with a really bad case of constipation early last week, and he's been struggling off and on with it since then. His doctor said to add Colace to the efforts I was already making, which has helped a little bit. If Tommy isn't strong enough to go to physical therapy tomorrow (he missed two sessions last week), I am going to ask the doctor to send in the nurse again, and maybe she can come up with a plan. In spite of his slowdown, Tommy was able to join Irv, Patti and me for our "farewell to summer" cookout dinner on the porch last night. Patti brought several wonderful salads made with the last of the summer vegetables (including her own luscious tomatoes), and Irv grilled Italian sausages. What a feast. Needless to say, Tommy's plate was heavy on the veggies (fiber) and light on the meat. His appetite has been flagging the last few days, but not last night, which made us all happy.

Monday, August 31, 2009

With the Tommy blog, no news is good news. When everything is ok, there's less to say. (Who was that modernist architect who said, "Less is more"?) We have been enjoying lots of phone calls and visits on the back deck with friends. Somebody lobs the tennis balls for the dogs with the Chuck-it that Diana and Larry brought us, and somebody grills something, and we pass around the binoculars and watch the jet-skis dodging the fishing boats dodging the kayakers in the creek. Tommy is working hard in his three-times-a-week therapy sessions. He's still a "moderate assist," but that's fine; he lost a lot of ground during that setback in June and July. Ugh...I'm not even going to try to count up the number of doctor visits and blood-giving sessions for those two months alone. Now, everything is going in the right direction, and Tommy's blood work is "normal", and normal never sounded so good. In other words, we are more than happy with less. Except for family & friends. We are so grateful for all the love you guys out there have sent our way, in so many different forms. We look forward to seeing and/or talking with all of you as we move into fall.

Friday, August 21, 2009

This week we've been relaxing into our summer--finally. Tommy is now in outpatient physical therapy. The therapy practice, called Tidewater, is close--maybe a half-mile toward the ocean from the Food Lion. Tommy will have three sessions a week for a month, possibly longer. Tommy really likes the folks there, and I do too. Besides working with the therapists, Tommy does about eight minutes a session on a machine that he loves and that is perfectly suited to him. I looked it up on the internet: It's officially called a "recumbent step trainer," and it's top of the line. Of course, it costs a small fortune; on eBay, the closest used one was in Indiana, and it was going for $2,600. Plus, shipping would cost a small fortune. So, no go for adding one to the home gym. However, I'm going to check with the senior center workout places around here and see if any of them have one; if so, maybe we can join after Tommy is finished with outpatient therapy.
We had a visitor from DC for the last couple of days named Onka Dekker. She's a woman about my age who worked for Tommy a long time ago, i.e., she's one of the "boatyard family" and has remained friends with our friend Capt. Steve Doles, who is now in Florida. Onka painted boats for a summer, and says that she loved working at the boatyard because it was such a refuge from the craziness of the city. She has returned to college to get a degree in history and is writing a paper on the closure of the boatyard, so she came to interview Tommy. It was a fun visit.

Monday, August 17, 2009

All systems are go with Tommy, and he continues to get his strength and his weight back up. Today was the last session with Scott, the physical therapist from PRMC's home health-care network. Now that Tommy is finished with home health care, he will get help at outpatient therapy for a month, and possibly longer. He has almost worked his way back to where he was when his liver problems happened during the spring and early summer. After the last few months, we are both still having trouble believing that we can relax and begin to enjoy summer!

Friday, August 14, 2009

This week, Tommy again gave blood for the follow-up to the endoscopic gall-stone removal procedure in June, to make sure that his liver enzyme numbers were getting back to normal. Today we got the results, and we were thrilled to see that all of the numbers are now back down in the normal range. For example, the normal range for alkalyne phosphatase is 40-129 units per liter. Prior to the procedure, that number had skyrocketed to 877; it is now 120. To celebrate, Tommy said he wanted to drive down to Ocean City for crabcakes, so that's what we did for dinner.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Today's photo is a shot of Tommy with his occupational therapist, Megan. That green blob in Tommy's hand is basically "silly putty" (it's called Theraputy--no kidding--when it's sold for three times the cost of the kids' version and used to help people improve their hand and finger coordination). Tommy's job is to roll it with both hands, pull it like taffy, roll it into a donut and then stretch it thinner by putting it around his cupped fingers, or flatten it out like a miniature crust for a pizza (which he's doing in the photo). Yesterday was Tommy's last session with Megan, who said that Tommy is doing great and that he and I work very well as a team. Yay. We learned a lot from Megan and will miss her.

Thursday, July 30

On Tuesday afternoon, Tommy got a beard trim (much-needed...I told him he was too young to look like Gabby Hayes). Kirsten (who will be Tommy's home-health-care aide for a month, maybe more) did a great job. Next Tuesday, Kirsten is going to cut Tommy's hair, and she is teaching me in the process. Her husband trained to be a barber and has taught her; she says he doesn't have a barber shop yet but hopes to eventually open one. Kirsten is also a barrel of fun. What a treat.
Yesterday, Tommy saw Dr. Giddins, his new primary-care doctor. She told Tommy several times how great he looks and that unless something else comes up she wants to see him in the usual three months. Everything turned around for Tommy when he saw Dr. DeMarco in Salisbury on July 13 for that emergency "second opinion" on his inability-to-urinate-at-all problem, and Dr. DeMarco took care of that by irrigating Tommy's bladder. During that same visit, his nurse, Jeanne, told me that there is a doctor named Dr. Giddins who is affiliated with their hospital (Peninsula Regional Medical Center, or PRMC, in Salisbury) who has an office right next to our post office in Ocean View! Dr. Giddins saw Tommy two days later, and she helped Tommy get over the pain hump (including making a call to Dr. DeMarco's office while we were there, which was the kind of communication that had not been happening with so many of the doctors we had previously been seeing). Finally, we could get some sleep. Dr. Giddins also called in the home-health-care troops from PRMC (which will now be our hospital of choice), and so for the past week these folks have been getting Tommy back up to speed: Mariel, the R.N. (who helped me with the fine points of catheter/bladder-irrigation techniques); Scott (physical therapy, who has a garage full of boats so he and Tommy are instant pals); Megan (occupational therapy, who finally solved my longtime problem of how to keep the bathroom floor dry during the shower when the shower bench sticks out into the room); and, of course, Kirsten.
In the spring, Irv, Tommy and I agreed that our big project this summer would be to go surf fishing. So, Irv and I got Irv's pickup truck registered and ready for us to take Tommy surf fishing. Now we can finally start to think about that!

Monday, July 27, 2009

We can now safely say that Tommy is out of the woods. The last couple of days, his entire food-and-water-processing system has stabilized and he has slept soundly through the nights. Yesterday morning, I asked him how he felt, and he said, "Like a new penny." What a hassle we've had since he went to the hospital on Memorial Day weekend--first the gall stones, then that horrible bladder problem that came out of left field. But now it looks like we can move on. Yay.