Saturday AM

Made it home by about 11:00PM and more or less settled in by midnight. Denise set Jake up in the family room, Jake in Lazy Boy and Denise on the couch, so that she would be available when/if he needed anything.


I toasted Jake's homecoming with a short Glenfiddich (compliments of my friends and coworkers at Toro) and crashed in bed about 12:02. I slept absolutely uninterrupted for eight straight hours (haven't done that in months) and woke up, still exhausted, to the sounds of Leo crying to get in to the house.

I went out to check on the family and found that they had migrated into the living room during the night. Apparently Jake did not find the Lazy Boy to his liking so he had moved onto a big easy chair and ottoman. Will have to work out some way for him to recline in his own bed.

Took a quick swing through the garden. It's amazing how you can leave a vegetable garden for 3 days and come back to pattipan squash the size of hubcabs and baseball bat zucchinis.

Blended Jake some breakfast of milk, frozen banana, vanilla ice cream and chocolate protein powder. He chased that with some Gatorade. For now I'm tracking his intake on a whiteboard to make sure he's getting a decent amount of calories and nutrients, but I have some software that will make the tracking a little easier. Just need to install it on a PC by the kitchen so it will be a little more convenient.

Medications will be interesting. Since everything needs to be in liquid form we ended up having 2 grocery bags full of bottles, instead of a few pill bottles. The pharmacist pointed out that I had great medical insurance to cover one medication in particular, "This one is normally about $2300." My co-pay for the whole batch was $71 and change.

All the medications come with little stoppers that allow the liquids to be drawn out into a dosing syringe. The gradations on the syringe allow accurate measurements. Once we have the liquid drawn we attach a short piece of tubing. Jake slides the tube back in by his cheek so he doesn't shoot the stuff straight down his throat. We have to keep a water chaser on hand because the taste apparently leaves something to be desired.

He has 2 different pain meds (one narcotic, the other not). Each calls for one dose every 6 hours, so he can overlap, taking one or the other every 3 hours so that he can control spikes in pain a little better. He also has an antibiotic (every 6 hours), eye drops (every 2 hours) and nausea medication to take as needed. And, because he can't brush his teeth, he has a prescription mouthwash that he has to use 2 times daily.

For now, Jake is sitting down playing his Ghostbusters X-box game. (He was disappointed that he could not create an avatar with an eyepatch; had to settle for a monocle.) He seems to be enjoying it, can hardly get a word out of him.

The next big thing on the agenda will probably be a shower.