Hilary's Cancer Fund Bleg: Update

Stop! Stop!

It's good! I'm good! Gosh!

I really am completely overwhelmed by the response to my bleg for cancer-cost funds. Just this weekend, I've received just under $1300 Cn, which is about 900 Euros. And I can't thank enough the 16 people, many of whom I know personally but some of whom I've never met face to face, who donated so promptly and so generously. I've got all your email addresses and will be sending notes along as promptly as I can. But you know who y'all are, and... well... just this once, I can't think of a single thing to say...

The money already raised will cover the expenses I have so far incurred and will enable me to pay back some of the people who have helped already, and carry us through for the next while.

And it came just in time. In brief, since it's late, I'll give y'all the lowdown.

I got home from the hospital on Friday at eight or so, as I said, and was doing OK until Saturday night when I started experiencing a very interesting new pain. With surgery behind me, and the healing of the abdominal injury coming along well, energy slowly returning, sitting up and walking getting easier, and sneezes, coughs and laughing getting much less fearsome, the new pain in my leg was not very welcome.

It was achey on and off last night, but not too bad, so we thought we'd wait until Monday to go see the GP in S. Mar on Monday. But this morning, the pain had matured into a fearsome burning from hip to knee, and woke me up this morning with an unpleasant shock. It waxed and waned, but by mid-afternoon it was clear we had to do something right away...

on a Sunday...in Italy...during one of the country's many impromptu train strikes...

Yah... tell me about it. Oh yeah, I mentioned that thing about calling a week ahead for a taxi, right?

So the only thing we could think of was to go down to the little ambulance station at the end of the block where the farmacia lady told us there was a doctor on call. The paramedics there, however, said that there was a risk of thrombosis, and I should go to the pronto soccorso in Civitavecchia's little hospital right away. I wasn't even allowed to walk the 200 yards up the road to go home first. A friend was available to drive us to Civi, but had to leave to look after his very pregnant wife, so we were stuck taking a taxi home from Civi, a cost of about 40 Euros.

The thing I was worried about, however, turned out not to be it. They've got me on this anticoagulant that I've been enjoying complaining about, and I was worried about thrombosis, but they gave me an ultrasound in the Civi hospital and a blood test and there was no sign of any blood clots. Which was a relief since the locus of pain was directly over the femoral artery. They did, however, find an enlarged lymph node and said I should go "soon" to the oncology department at the Gemelli, given everything that is going on.

So, I'm off again to Gemelli Pronto Soccorso tomorrow morning. I won't be taking my computer with me this time, so probably no more updates for a while.

I don't think there is a lot of reason to worry, however, since no one at the Civi hospital looked in any way panicked, and the Big Bad we were worried about turned out not to be happening.

Until last week, I really only had a vague idea that I even had lymph nodes, let alone that they could get inflamed, or hurt in any way. I really have no idea, even after having read a bit about them, what they are for, and I think I've had enough of looking things up on Wikipedia for a while. I'm going to take the Civi doctor's attitude and say that although it's probably not dire, it's just worth going into Gemelli where they have more information, to let them rule out anything threatening.

Then I'm going to go home, and concentrate on getting some practice on the Belvedere Torso.

Thank you all, for prayers and continued help and support.

More soon...

HJMW



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