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.