NAP Time

Sleep is overrated.  Napping is where it's at.  

No, Chris did not take over my blog site.  I've just discovered that it is often easier for me to sleep in a chair or recliner where gravity is working with me.  Over the past 3-4 weeks, as I lay down to sleep, I start getting into severe coughing jags.  It will cause me to gag, but there's nothing to come up except clear phlegm.   My theory behind why the coughing and gagging are worse when I lay down is that when I'm upright and I cough, gravity will work at keeping the phlegm in the esophagus to clear and peristalsis (the rhythmic contractions that the esophagus uses to push food into the stomach) will work from there.  However, when I am laying flat, the mass compresses more on my bronchioles and esophagus causing more irritation and therefore increases coughing/phlegm but now, my esophagus doesn't have gravity and is blocked by the large mass, that it causes me to gag it out.  Because there is obstruction of the esophagus, the stomach contents never come up, so there is no complete vomiting.
OK, I hope that description didn't leave any one queezy.  I'm always making assumptions that people want to know as much detail as I do, yet I know (from my 2 oldest kids) that this is not always true!

After a 2 hour test of patience through Seattle traffic, we arrived at Virginia Mason at 9:30 this morning.  Everything looks good as far as my healing from surgery and my port placement, but unfortunately, the pathology reports are still pending.  Apparently the pathology does not appear as straightforward as the frozen section implied and so they have sent out the specimens to more physicians to get further opinions on what I am dealing with and what treatment should be performed.  What does this mean?  Well, I will have to wait until next week to get any treatment started and in the meantime, I will continue to take medications to suppress the "scary" cough that makes everyone think that I am going to give them pneumonia or tuberculosis.

This afternoon, I visualized the inside of my heart via echocardiogram.  It was fascinating to watch but they wouldn't let Chris take any pictures so I can't share that with you.  It's basically a glorified ultrasound of the heart that looks at the valves, chambers and blood flow.  We were able to obtain a CD later and I'm happy to report that my heart is relatively normal.  Chris enjoyed watching in his usual manner with his eyes closed and occasional snoring.

After returning home, I took my opportunity to make up for last night's poor sleep and dozed for a few hours.  I'm still not fond of the groggy feeling when awakening from naps during the day time.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is our first non-holiday, weekday since December 30th, that we have not had at least one doctor's appointment or test.  While it seems like I should be thankful for the "day off", we're just eager to get things moving and get healing and feeling better.  This is my opportunity to practice patience!

God Bless.

I'm so good at sleep, I can do it with my eyes closed.  -- unknown author, but likely Chris Platz has said this a time or two.