The American Patient

By posting in the late afternoon Shenzhen time, the datelines on our posts are finally in sync with the events of the day. Richard has decided to leave our Mac on California time so it is forever 15 hours behind Shenzhen.

It has been a difficult day for Richard. He looked pale when he got up this morning and started to sweat profusely. He was wearing a short sleeve t-shirt and light sweatpants. I had put the air-conditioner on overnight so the room was cool. He continued to sweat throughout breakfast while developing a runny nose at the same time. Then he got a bad headache and had to lie down. I gave him some Tylenol. His face had taken on a waxy sallow look and his skin felt clammy to the touch. I went to get the nurse. She verified that Richard did not have a temperature. She asked if Richard had stayed flat on his back for 6 hours after his injection on Friday and I told her that he did. We let him drift off to sleep and he slept for the next few hours and woke up for lunch at one o'clock.

He looked visibly better and had stopped sweating. His color had returned. His face was pinkish in color and the dark circles under his eyes were barely visible and his headache was almost all gone. After lunch, Richard decided to take a short walk around the floor. He has not used his walker since we got here. It took him quite some effort to ambulate the length of the hallway. I should mention that he had fallen in the shower the previous night and scraped his right knee on the hard rubber mat on the floor. He had slipped off the small round stool that he sat on in the shower. Because of the neuropathy in his hands and feet, it did not hurt him much but the knee was visibly bleeding.

I am speculating that because we had so many visitors yesterday, Richard did not have a sufficient amount of rest and this resulted in the set back today. I will make sure when he gets his next lumbar puncture on Wednesday that he gets enough rest the day after the procedure. Right now, he is in bed watching the movie, The English Patient. We get many Chinese channels (both Cantonese and Mandarin) on the TV in our room. There is even a Chinese MTV channel and a channel that's in English. We watched "The Closer" yesterday. So far, we've not seen any American programs that have been dubbed in Chinese. You haven't lived yet until you've seen Bugs Bunny dubbed in Italian as we had in Switzerland!