Small steps

It was weeks more in the hospital last March. Meanwhile Mark's strength to walk was waning with little physically therapy available to him. Basically even sitting up in bed became difficult. Walking was near impossible. Eventually with persistence and tears we were able to insist on Mark's move out of the hospital and into rehab. We were lucky to have a place for him to go that was about 10-15 minutes away. Unfortunately we could no longer stay the nights with him.

After a week at rehab he regained enough strength to get out of bed with a walker and get to the bathroom. So we got a hospital bed for home and a walker and a week later he was home with us. FINALLY. The swelling in his legs had reduced dramatically. He was happy being home with us and we were happy having him. It was a difficult time though. Being out of hospital care meant a lot of worry of what could or might happen at any moment. The nights were the worst but they were survived and morning came again. I think we all were suffering from some sort of post traumatic stress thing.

A physical therapist and a nurse came to the house at least once a week. Mark had exersizes to do and the days went by pretty quickly. The expansion of our cable channel signup meant many hours watching the food channel and such. Plus we started a few movies so we could watch together.

In May things were looking up a bit though the scan results at the end of April did not look good at all. But his health and increased movement was slowly improving. Getting off the chemo I'm sure helped too.

He did end up with more blood clots in his legs and then went on blood thinner. This isn't a happy chore for him with 2 shots a day. But it has worked great. Mid-may he went in for a week for cyberknife treatment on his spine mets. This was a relatively painless but time consuming procedure. About a week later he was in for surgery on his spine to stabilize everything. It was a much bigger operation than expected and we were a little scared to loose what little new mobility we had gained.

But his recovery was rather good and slowly but surely he was back to his mobility in May and then surpassing even that.