Waiting For The Train

When we began this journey five years ago, we saw an end goal… chemo, stem cell transplant, recovery. Three simple stages. We didn’t fool ourselves that the process day to day would be simple or that we wouldn’t have down days, but we could tick off the cycles of chemo, the days in the stem cell unit, the milestones of recovery.

After our experience with cancer in 2004, we figured, as before, it would take five years to recover to pre-cancer life… or as close as we could get.

Our blogs to keep our friends and families informed of our progress began with the title “The Waiting is the Worst.” And it is…. we seem to work better when we’re moving forward, towards a goal, towards a treatment, towards recovery. We’ve had those moments when we seem to live in a fog of despair when we push to find the light. And we work to get through them by finding the pinpricks of light like faraway stars that can guide us until the sun shines through. A light at the end of a long tunnel. But lately it feels like that light at the end of that proverbial tunnel may just be an oncoming train!

As we near that five year goal we find ourselves waiting once more for an implantation. Instead of a port for the administration of chemo and blood products, we were waiting for Rich to become Borg once more with a Heart Loop Recorder placed near his sternum. We were excited for the information this little medical marvel would collect and store… answers would be forthcoming!

For the first time outside of a hospital, he will be monitored 24/7 via this small paperclip sized data gathering device. It’s slipped under the skin in an outpatient, local anesthesia setting. The procedure is fairly quick and requires no more than one stitch and a little medical glue. The incision itself is no wider than a pinky fingernail.

We’re given a box little larger than what our cell phones came in. Inside is a monitoring unit that bluetooths to Rich’s recording implant. This unit now lives next to our bed and, somewhere between midnight and 5am, it connects to the implant and checks the data for any abnormalities. If it finds any, they are sent to the doctor’s office. Our Borg just needs to be within ten feet to connect.

Usually, and this is the scary part, Rich feels no indication of any heart incidents. If he did, the unit also comes with a small pocket-sized wand. That wand, in case of felt palpitations, syncope, racing heartbeats, or any oddities, is placed over the implant after pushing a button to activate it. The implant goes back six minutes, records forward to one minute past the point where the button on the wand is pushed and sets that data aside to send that night through the monitoring unit. This will tell the doctors if what he felt was indeed a heart episode or not.

In so many ways, we’re told, this monitoring will not intrude on our lives. When Rich is away camping with our grandson, the data will send when he gets back. Other than when he feels he needs to record an incident; he has no other action than to sleep near his monitoring unit. Each time we visit the doctor, they will download ALL the data and the implant will continue to record for three years. At the end of the time, Rich will be once more dis-assimilated from the Borg Continuum.

Simple!

But we’ve had complications and find ourselves once again at the office of the cardio electrophysiologists well before anticipated. The site is tender; more than it should be at this point post-surgery. And then there are the night sweats. They start with chills; Rich is cold to the core. Then he wakes up drenched. Little fevers come and go. All the bedding and his t-shirt are wet and need to be changed. Initially, days after the surgery, he’s examined, and we’re asked to wait and watch as there is no evidence of infection. The incision site is healing beautifully. So, we watch, and we wait.

A week after surgery, he’s still experiencing the sweats and those odd little fevers. As the doctor and the nurse practitioner palpate the area, Rich jumps when they hit a particular spot. It’s decided to start antibiotics in a very Dr House way. If he doesn’t respond to the antibiotics after a few days, then it’s something else.

The aches, the fevers, the night sweats all continue at ten days post-op. But the site of the implantation is more comfortable. We decide to give it one more day before bringing it again to the attention of our gurus given that increased comfort. We’re not ready to stop the antibiotics yet if we’re seeing a better result. And perhaps this will be the night when the sweats will not come.

Watch and Wait.

And praying the train whistle doesn’t blow while we’re still in the tunnel… much better to be in the station and ready to hop on the train and move forward again!