Chemo #1 Day 18 - Catheter Out

I arrived this morning to find Pa was still in the room with Ma. He usually leaves early for daily Mass, and Ma is alone when I arrive in the morning. But today he decided to skip Mass because Ma had been hallucinating all night. She kept Pa up till 5am. I sent him home to get some sleep. The hallucinations continued throughout the day. The worst one was when she suddenly yelled out. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she was falling. I told her no, she was safe in bed. Later she started crying because she heard some people say she was crazy for having all these hallucinations. I told her it was just a dream. Most of her hallucinations are pretty harmless though, and we just humor her.

There were no celebrity sightings today. I don't know if she still thinks her Tiger Woods hallucination was real.

Kit joined me most of the day at the hospital. I made her do most of the things I usually do. Might as well put her to work. She brought pancit for Ma, and Ma ate it instead of her hospital food. In the evening, our family friends Tita Josie & Tito Ben stopped by with egg drop soup. Ma had a bowl of it.

The port saga isn't over. Someone drew blood from Ma's arm instead of her port. Pa was in the room but wasn't paying attention.

The doctor stopped by and is concerned that Ma's chest hasn't stopped draining. Her pleural area keeps filling with new fluid daily. He ordered the catheter removed, and it was done tonight after I left. That leaves just one tube sticking out of her, the chest tube.

Ma sat up in a chair a couple of times today. With the catheter out, she'll be forced to get up and walk to the commode. But it's one less tube to deal with. There's only one tube left to deal with -- the chest tube. It drains into a container that looks like this. The fluid has also started clearing up and is no longer bloody. We'll have to talk to the doctor about alternatives to doing another pleurodesis. I don't want Ma to experience that kind of pain again. She does remember some things that happened before she went into the ICU, and the pleurodesis is one of them. She remembers how painful it was.