Pete Unplugged - November 25, 2010

Holidays. I think I'll just stay in bed the next time one comes around.

I woke up early today thinking about what I'd do first to get Thanksgiving dinner moving. As I walked past Pete's door he called to me so I went in to say good morning. What he told me was that somewhere between the time he fell asleep and 1 AM the needle going into his port had come out. That means the chemo infusion was stopped. I told him he should have gotten me up and asked him if he had called the doctor. The answer to both was something about it being the middle of the night. Of course I wanted him to call the hospital right then but he refused, saying it was still too early.

I finally convinced him to call the number we had been given for the hospital but when he did they told him that it was a physicians' answering service but that there was no Dr R on their list. I talked him into calling the cell phone number we had been given that was supposed to be a direct line to A, but at 6 AM there was no answer so all he could do was leave a voice mail message for her.

So what now? It seemed pointless to go to our local hospital ER because neither of us had a clue as to what was supposed to be done and we doubted that anyone at the hospital would have any idea either. It was out, had been for several hours, and who knows if it could cause some type of complication if it got put back in. Best to wait for a call back.

I had the same telephone number as Pete did for the service, so apparently there was some mistake somewhere, so I went online to NYU and found a number, differing from the one we had by one digit and when Pete called this new number it was Dr R's service. So we waited.

I kept pestering Pete to try the cell number again and he said he would, but not before 9.

I guess I was expecting to get a call back any minute and that we might have to head into the city on a moment's notice. Not an ideal thing to do, considering the traffic mess that we had encountered coming home the night of the Halloween parade. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was scheduled to start at 10 and was going right though some of the streets that we would use to get to the hospital. I called my sister and gave her the heads up that Thanksgiving was on hold until we knew what was happening.

At 9 Pete made a second call to the cell number. 10 o'clock rolled around and still no call back. My sister's prediction that we'd get a call as soon as I started making dinner actually was what made me decide to begin getting things in order. It was somewhere around 11 that I put the bird in the oven. Any minute the phone should ring. It didn't.

I had stuck the meat thermometer into the bird but as it got closer to the time that it should be done the temperature just didn't seem to be going up. Guessing that my thermometer had probably died, I called my sister and asked if she would bring hers over. As soon as she arrived I put hers in and it read the same low temperature that mine had shown. Everything else, the mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, was nice and hot and ready to eat. I turned the oven temp up to see if that would make a difference and we started on the hot stuff. When I checked the temp again and it still hadn't budged (it had stopped at 120) I pulled the pan out and started cutting and placing the slices and stuffing into a pyrex dish and stuck it in the microwave where it finally reached the prescribed temperature. Great time for my oven to die.

Pete finally got a call from A this evening. We had been scheduled to go in tomorrow morning, so it looks like we're just going to stick with that plan.

It is Thanksgiving, so I guess I can say that I am very thankful that the needle came out with the Ifos and not when he was getting the Adriamycin (Doxorubicin) because D had told us that if Dox contacts tissue outside the vein it causes a horrible raw and painful ulcer that takes a long time to heal.