2 days at home

We have been at home for almost 2 days, and things seem stable for Gary for now. Wednesday afternoon and evening were hectic and stressful as we spent five hours working through multiple glitches in getting everything set up for gastric suction and IV feeding and meds here at home. Getting the right equipment, the right parts that match the equipment, the right medications, and the right supplies to give the medications all here in place for a nurse to teach us how to do things turns out to be enormously complicated, and it seemed that everything that could get delayed was delayed. But since Wednesday evening things have run relatively smoothly: we have successfully completed a couple of cycles of connecting and disconnecting the IV nutrition, and are getting settled into a new routine. It has been a real blessing to have family members helping, and so many messages of love and support. These messages are meaningful to us, even though the amount of focus necessary in recent days hasn't allowed us to respond to most of them. Thank you!

Gary's energy level is very low, but he is feeling comfortable most of the time and has been able to sleep quite well. We will drive to SLC this afternoon for an xray and appointment at the oncologist's office where they will compare the appearance of the intestines with that in the previous 2 xrays that were done 8 days ago and 4 days ago. There had been moderate improvement between the previous two. We have yet to see signs that anything might be able to move out of the stomach.

It feels like we have at least for now come out of free fall and into a holding pattern. We'll continue to watch and wait!