View from our hospital room.
It’s early morning as I look out the window of our hospital room. I can see the sun sparkling on the ocean across the street. There are two dolphins jumping out of the water and the street is quiet. Soon the streets will start to fill with people as thousands head to the beach in this tourist area of Tijuana. The Hope4Cancer Clinic is just a block from the Bullring on Avenue de Pacifico. The street is lined with cafes, coconut and taco stands. In a few hours the Mariachi bands will stroll up and down the boardwalk and cowboys on horseback will be cantering down the street amid the cars. Inside Lennie is still sleeping soundly after another stressful day.
Lennie had the best sleep that he has had in months, but woke up feeling as weak as when
Lennie and I on the boardwalk across from Hope4Cancer.
we arrived here. He wouldn’t get up for breakfast and then didn’t even eat half of his lunch. He had to be wheeled downstairs as he was too weak to walk. By 4 p.m., during one of his treatments the doctor noticed his profuse sweating and thought that he was having a heart attack. He was taken into the examination room and hooked up to the EKG machine and monitors. His heart rate had soared to 120 and his blood pressure had risen to about 160 over 118. He had all the signs of a heart attack. I had seen this before though. I thought that he may be a little hypoglycemic from the lack of eating, but his blood glucose was 155. He was given a baby aspirin and a nitro-glycerin patch on his chest and a bag of saline to hydrate him. After 2 hours the sweating had stopped and his vital signs were more normal, although still a bit high and the EKG showed an arrhythmia.
I have seen him have these same symptoms before. Pain had brought them on. The stress of everything over the past year has brought it on. The final decision in the examination room was that he has a very strong body for all that it has had to endure. We took him back to his room and I got him cleaned up and into his bed. We now only have two days left here and then are leaving for Hawai’i. We are both afraid to leave the safety of Hope4Cancer. The care here has been uncomparable. There are 10 patients at any one time here with almost as many doctors and nurses. The internal medicine specialist made a special trip in on Sunday morning to check on him personally. He is on magnesium and a couple of drugs to deal with the arrhythmia and his high blood pressure that has developed while here in Tijuana. Everyone keeps telling him that it is his strength that is pulling him through.
Adios,
Kathryn
www.kathrynsmith.com