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Lebanon, Oregon, United States
We are Terry & Cathye Kinkelaar. If you've followed my blog in the past, you know that Lydia, my beautiful wife of 52 years, and I made the lifestyle choice to move to Oregon in 2017. You've seen my posts about losing her in May 2020 to cancer. Although I was left alone, I am pleased to say that I have found happiness again. In April 2021, I met Cathye, who also lost her longtime husband in 2020. Well, we fell in love and were married in April 2022. So, if folks are still interested, I will continue to post here as we move forward with our lives and adventures!

Monday, February 17, 2020

Oregon Living 2020 – Blog #14 – Home Again! & Back Again!


 

Friday, Feb 14th, 2020……  I got up early and got monster puppy out for her walk. Sis was already out in the field with Quincy. When we got back, I let her out to run with Q and came in and got the towel ready. Once she gets rinsed off and dried, I can feed her. Then I made my breakfast and worked on my part of last year’s medical for the tax lady.  Lydia has to help me with her part so I will have to wait on that. Lydia said that they most likely will not release her until closer to noon, so I hung around and cleaned up the house a bit. They said she will need to have a bathroom exclusively for her use for 3 days (as she cleans out the chemo meds and toxins), so I moved my stuff over to the guest bathroom and got everything ready for her to use the master.
I left at noon and headed over and picked up my sister and we got to the hospital at 12:45 and she was dressed and ready.
She has a list of things to do (and not to do), things to eat, and things to do in the next week or so. She will need to make an appointment for the next round beginning in March but she can’t do that until she sees the oncologist on the 20th. We got her back home and set up in her chair. She spent the day there and watched tv and caught up on some of our taped shows that I already watched. I fixed her some vegetable soup and crackers and she ate that. A good sign!  We both went to bed pretty early. 

Saturday, Feb 15th, 2020…… She didn’t have a good night. Most of the meds have kicked in and all of them cause diarrhea, so she was up every hour. Going to the bathroom is really hard, especially now because she is severely bloated from the chemicals and the fluids she was on. It makes it very hard to even bend over or lift her legs so I have to help her change her disposable undies each time. So, neither of us had a good restful sleep. She stayed in bed to be closer to the bathroom. But we did have to go into the Lebanon Hospital Infusion Center this morning at 9:30. She was getting a shot of white blood cells. I got her in the car and we made it there and back but it wore her out. Then it was back to bed and more diarrhea.  I went out and got KFC for dinner but she barely ate.   
 
Sunday, Feb 16th, 2020…… Last night was even worse for both of us. Same routine but she has lost so much strength and stamina that everything is hard. Today was another trip to the Infusion Center. This time (and each third day) was for a blood draw. They do this at the center because they use the port to draw the labs. On the way to the car she asked to sit down and luckily, we were next to the dining room chairs. But she missed and fell – but as luck would have it – right down on Rylee’s big padded doggie bed!  So no harm. But I knew something was wrong. We got to the infusion center and I told them I was taking her over next door to the er and they thought, given what they could see – was a good idea. They made a report and sent it ahead so she was taken to a bed in the er pretty quickly. The doctors read her history and did the requisite lab tests. Everything was ok but they said is was up to us whether she went home or was admitted. She made that call before I could – I can’t move about on my own right now so I need help. Admit me! It took another hour or so before she could get a room and get set up in it. I left and stopped and got dinner and came back home and was in for the night. I will be going in early tomorrow to bring her phone and some clean clothes and we’ll see what last night brought us.   

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