Alain "Spiderman" Robert

This guys is literally amazing. Watch the video long enough to get to where he is climbing skyscrapers with his bare hands and no safety equipment.

This is John here...

Chris is typing this, but I am the one saying it to him.

Hi, this is John. I will be getting in touch with each of you as time goes by. The hospital has loaned me a computer so I can access the internet and send and receive emails and Blog posts.

My foot is healing very well and I expect to be able to walk around soon. My strength is up and I am walking again, but with a walker and only short distances.

I'm not sure what else to say right now, but I do appreciate the posts and hope you continue to visit my Blog and say hi once in a while. Bye for now.

"R" hath arrived!

Robert Eaton has arrived in Florida as of yesterday. And we're all happy to see him. Robert goes by "R" and has for most of his life. If you don't know him he is quite a character. Everyone is laughing whenever he is around. And no, it is not at him! He just has a way about him that makes people crack up. Trust me.

I picked him up from Tampa International yesterday afternoon and brought him to my father's apartment. He got settled in and then we headed down to the VA to visit my father. Naturally, they were both happy to see each other. I'll try to find a photo of the two of them together, but it will be from months ago. Maybe in the next few days I'll snap some newer pics.

R is staying at my fathers apartment and driving to the nursing home each day to visit. In fact he was there for several hours earlier today, but he plans on doing a second trip with me in about an hour. After seeing the nursing home yesterday R was relieved that it was quite pleasant and the people extremely caring and friendly. We've all been shocked at how well run this place is, to be honest, but my father has been bragging about the VA hospital for years and years.

It's all in how you look at it

Today was a big day. We had several rather important appointments at the VA hospital this morning and we we're a bit nervous going into them. The first appointment was simply a visit to the clinic where they drew his blood and made sure everything looked fine. And everything looked fine.

The next appointment was an X-Ray of his chest. The goal was to determine how the lung cancer had progressed. And as expected the cancer has grown. Cancer does this. But the good news is that the growth is very small since April, which was the date of the last X-Ray.

It sucks having to be happy about the cancer growing slightly, but growing slightly is much better than growing significantly. So today was a pretty good day. We left in good spirits.

Food at the VA isn't always edible

When I arrived at the VA to visit last night I noticed that my dad ate almost nothing at all for dinner. Obviously, this worried me. So I asked him why he didn't eat and he responded, "Did you see that pork chop!?" Note Exhibit A below.



Exhibit A

Now wanting to see him starve to death I asked him if McDonald's would be more appealing. See Exhibit B.



Exhibit B

I felt sorry for that Big Mac. It didn't stand a chance. And the Sunday went down pretty fast too. I even tried to take a bite of the corn bread that came with the nursing home meal and I literally spat it out in the bathroom. It tasted like ass-flavored cardboard.

But not all of the meals at the VA are like this so don't worry. I've tasted several and they're darn tasty. Last night the cooks must have been drunk or high or mad at something.

Pics from when Keith visited

Picture this...

Here are some photos of my father and his new home at the VA. Of course this new home could very well be a temporary one, but it is still home right now so that's what I'll call it.

Allow me to introduce Joey

The VA has lowered his Oxycodone dose from 30mg to 20mg per day. Every 12 hours they bring him a 10mg pill to alleviate pain. And it works. Unfortunately, one of the side effects to this extremely powerful central nervous system depressant is that it can put you into a veggie-like stupor.

There have been times when we’re visiting and he is hardly there mentally. The drug makes him sleepy and it tends to slur his speech. The end result is he feels like he is drugged up – and he is.

A few days ago I was sitting with him in his room talking about this and that (mostly that), when he suddenly asked me, “Where did she go?” I asked, “Where did who go?” He says, “The little girl that has been sitting here for the past 30 minutes or so.”

Wow.

There wasn’t a little girl sitting with us. And I told him so. He quickly realized that he had been hallucinating and it scared the heck out of him. So he clicked the button to call a nurse and a male nurse immediately showed up at his bedside. They are really good at the VA and we have no complaints. It couldn’t have been more than 10 seconds from the push of the button to him standing there asking what he needed.

So my father explained to the guy what had just happened and we discussed it for maybe 20 minutes. The nurse said that hallucinations are not common, but they do happen on Morphine and Oxycodone and other such drugs. They can be more common in patients that have some liver problems, and my dad’s cancer doctor had suggested maybe a year ago that he probably had some liver cirrhosis. Maybe this was the cause. Maybe not.

We requested that this nurse put a note in for the head nurse tomorrow. And he did. The next day his dosage was dropped from 30mg to 20mg per day and it seems to have had an immediate positive impact on his personality or liveliness.

Today I visited and he was in good spirits. We spent some time outside sitting on the huge patio facing the mangroves that line the bay. There are a zillion squirrels scampering about all day every day – and they stare at you waiting for you to throw them some peanuts or other foodstuffs.

But the signs all over warn us, “Do not feed the animals! They will bite!”

Somehow we ended up with a small Ziploc of peanuts weighing us down, so we discreetly tossed them to the patient squirrels. I took a few digital photos of the little guys, so maybe I’ll succeed in posting them here. How can anyone resist feeding squirrels? They’re such a cool animal.

This Blog is by "invite only" now!

I've just made this Blog accessible by invitation only. There are too many weird people wandering around the Internet surfing from one Blog to the next. Some of them have a tendency to say inappropriate things. Keeping this Blog private should eliminate that problem. But you'll have to log into your Google Account each time you wish to access this Blog. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it seems to be a wise safety precaution.

Dad at the VA nursing home

Hello everyone. This is Chris posting. My father is now living at the VA Nursing Home. He has been there for several weeks and will probably be there for at least another few weeks.

I'm going to start using this Blog to keep all of you in the loop as to his health status. It can be difficult to relay the same information by telephone to lots of people every few days. This Blog should do the trick so please check back often if you are interested in learning about how he is doing.

Please post comments! All comments will be printed out and given to my father on a daily basis. Obviously, nothing beats an occaisonal phone call, so please feel free to give him a call whenever the mood strikes. He cannot make long distance calls from his room, but we're looking into fixes for that problem. We might get him a prepaid calling card or figure out how to bill long distance calls to his home phone. But as of right now you will have to call him. I strongly suggest you don't call before 9:00 am or after 8:30 pm. I'm not going to post his phone number here, so ask for it through email if you don't currently have it.