Liberation Day

Saturday 5 May

Lara spent a quiet night throughout, breathing nice and easy. The day was filled almost  back to back with a few visitors, plus the nurse and the doctor, leaving her precious few hours to nap and rekindle her energy. I recharged by going to the gym.

We discussed with the doctor about medication and oxygen. The result is that effective immediately, oxygen is taken down from 9 to 6 liters a minute on a trial basis, and that as from Monday her morphine will be gradually lowered from 20 mg (truly a base dose to begin with) to probably around 12.5 mg, and so will the Tranxen be. Also, we cancelled the scheduled trip to the hospital on Monday and rescheduled for Wednesday.

Something else.

Lara's oxygen high output concentrator comes, as I have described, with a face mask. The mask's main feature is a plastic bag that hangs down from the front where the oxygen filters in from the machine, making it taut. The oxygen Lara breathes comes from that little bag through a valve that opens when she inhales, and closes when she exhales allowing the carbon dioxide to escape through two little valves in the sides of the mask. All these little elements should of course operate flawlessly.

For those of you who haven't stopped reading by now: this is where things went wrong around 6:30PM this evening. It turned out that in the mask she was wearing, the little bag had sprung a leak. In the replacement mask, a sturdier model, the valve at the top of the bag was missing. Two masks out of service. Luckily we had a third one, which did work. Still we called the company (24/7 service), since we didn't want to go on without a back-up mask. Lara is sensitive when it comes to lack of oxygen (and so everybody else should be). The company technician brought a spare one (a model without a bag, but okay). Two more will be delivered tomorrow afternoon.

While a friend of hours was visiting, Mary Pitsy, I felt a headache and later a chill coming up. I don't care to contract anything right now, so I took acyclovir and dafalgan. The cotton stuffing in my head doesn't hark well.