No shoes - No feet

Dale Brown, retired basketball coach from L S U, wrote in his book,"I complained when I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet". Joyce has all her parts but the meaning was not lost to me since the last blog was written. I have always said that I was very lucky with Joyce because she was a "happy camper"and she also was an A-typical Alzheimer's victim. She is healthy, fit and can do most things for herself. I left you on the last blog heading to Lake Charles for an injection after a 5 week interval due to an infected tooth. When I got there , because of equipment failure the night before, there was no Enbrel to inject. This was going to eventually delay Joyce's injection another 3 weeks or 8 weeks between injections.

I had already planned a trip to San Antonio to let Joyce visit the two daughters that live there, Michelle and Danielle. We left the wednesday before Memorial Day weekend and had an easy trip there. Since they were both working thursday we drove up to Wimberly and ate lunch with my cousin and his wife. That was Joyce's last good day for over three weeks. That night Joyce came down with an intestinal disorder. I found out later that the antibiotics they gave her for her tooth had wiped out the good bacteria in her system and she had developed something called C-dis..(i think) which is not fun. Needless to say it curtailed some of our activities but still allowed the daughters to get to spend some time with her. Other than Joyce's malady it really was a very nice visit. On thursday I had made arrangements with Dr Ryder to stop in and get an injection on the way home on tuesday but after consulting with him on the way home tuesday we decided to wait until Joyce was well due to Enbrel's effect on the immune system. While traveling back tuesday I called and made arrangements to take Joyce in to see Dr. Fontenot, our regular physician. I brought in a soiled 'depends' and turned it over to the lab when we went there after seeing the doctor. Dr Fontenot explained that this malady is slow developing, it was almost 3 weeks since the tooth extraction and initiation of the antibiotics. He intially wanted to wait for lab results but after dealing with it for 5 days already, I asked him to be proactive and start her on the meds that day. Luckily she wasn't dehydrated and the lab results confirmed his diagnosis. He initially gave her a 10 day prescription but it took an additional 8 days of meds to finally get her well. During that time she became very sedate and almost non-responsive. I could see the effects of Enbrel had worn off and she had become zombie like. I was finally able to get her injection on June 10th. It was obvious, even on the way home, that the benefits were still there. Joyce continued to improve for the next 5 or 6 days. She seems to be back to her old self now and no worse for the ordeal. As for myself I got a glimpse of what it could be like later and just reinforced my recognition of how lucky I am that she is like she is and not like many are. The one thing we did find out was that we can stretch injections out to 5 or 6 weeks without noticable drop off in the effectiveness. We will pursue this the rest of the year. Needless to say the last 2 months have been a humbling experience. I am so glad it is in the past now. Thank you all who keep up and care and I hope it helps someone.