Doing well at home!

Craig is doing very well at home.  We've got the dextrose bag changing procedure down.  We have to change the bag of sugar water every 24 hours and clean out his lines with saline and reset the pump to do it's job.  The nurse came over the weekend so we could change his pic line again (once a week) and she said I was doing ok on the bag changing procedure so she'll just need to come back next Sunday.  Craig did have a mishap with his bag in the middle of the night Fri. night.  He was getting something to eat and set the bag down on the counter and turned away from it and it fell to the ground and started making all sorts of beeps and noises.  He woke me up and we tried to reset it but we couldn't get it to work again and nothing was pumping into him.  We called the 24 hour homecare helpline and I told her he couldn't be without this or "he will die"!  I was a little panicked at the time! She had the pharmacist call us back and we tried a few things to fix it but it wouldn't stop beeping and telling us it had a problem with the cassette that fits on the bottom of the pump. Finally we decided to put a whole new bag on with a new cassette and it worked again!  That was a test of my skills, since it was 5 in the morning and I wasn't fully awake!  Since then he's been doing well and his blood sugar has stayed up all weekend!  It's definitely trending up which is a good sign the radiation is working to shut down the insulin producing tumors a little.  Hopefully we will slowly be able to reduce the glucose going into him but not quite yet.  We see Dr. Weis this week so we'll get an update on labs, etc.  Life is going pretty well and we hope it will get better for Craig soon.

Here's Craig modeling his latest outfit.  It's tough to have sleeves and an IV in your arm.  He squeezes the bag through the arm hole and it works!  He's definitely a fashion statement!

Maddie and Mitch in Paris!  We love living vicariously through them.