For the past 20 hours, she was very loopy and still experiencing pain at a 3 to 4 level. Sometimes 5. That was through a significantly higher amount of dilauded pain meds. Today, the hospitalist (who sucks at cancer stuff but is great at acute care) came in with a plan to control the pain. We planned to slowly increase the amount of dilauded and to administer it at a regular interval. Every two hours she received .5 mg which is pretty much equivalent to the old pain pump’s prescribed entire daily output. For the first 4 segments (8 hours) she still experienced pain at a level 4 or 5. Not a good sign. I was just about to call in the dr to have her double the amount to 1.0 mg every two hours, but 30 minutes prior to the time, Lori snapped out of it! It was awesome. I was beginning to doubt that she would ever emerge from her mental haze, but over the course of about 20 minutes she became almost 100% lucid and she claimed she had 0 pain. I had been recording her conversation with her mom during that time, and she just kept getting sharper and sharper. Her dad and I were amazed.

Since then, we’ve continued on this medication rate. Her pain has returned a bit but it has been steadily a 2 or 1 which is much more acceptable. Hopefully this is the new baseline. We can work with this. At this point, I don’t care if she’s unable to move much, which she isn’t; I’m just thankful we can talk almost normally again. Every day that her mind is good will now be considered a great day for me. It’s brutal when she’s not able to talk to us clearly, and that makes her lucidity that much more precious now. I expect this will keep her going for a long time to come. Vital organs are all still good. The brain spots will be a challenge to treat while she’s dealing with this increased medication load, but I think it’s possible. I don’t have a plan forward yet beyond tomorrow, but I like the options now. When I was considering upping the meds to 1.0mg, I hadn’t like the options much. Now, some doors may have been opened, and we might get back to normal.

It was a great bit of hope tonight, but she’s not out of the woods yet. Hopefully this can be sustained! Thank God