Saturday Events

The end of week two in Houston brought a trip to the MDA Emergency Room for Robert.  He finished all chemo treatments on Wednesday afternoon.  He had been feeling okay, eating little portions and taking slow walks around the hotel property to regain some strength.  Sarah and her family came down Saturday morning so we could meet them at Hermann Park for a visit in an outdoor setting.  It was a cooler Houston morning and the perfect morning to be outside.  While standing in line to ride the train, Robert started feeling faint after feeling fine all morning long.  I was able to get him to a chair away from the grandchildren.  He began to feel even worse.  I had forgotten to bring his gator aid so Sarah was looking for him something to drink.   While she was gone, the manager of the closed park cafe saw Robert’s distress and asked what he could do to help.   I had him call the paramedics because I knew there was no way we could get him to the car.  The cafe manager got a towel and bag of ice to use on Robert and then he went to wait for the paramedics to get there so he could show them where we were.  He was a life saver.  He was late opening the cafe because of his help to us.  A truly wonderful young man.   Sarah was getting our car so she could follow us to the hospital which was less than five minutes away.  Ryan made sure the grandchildren got their train ride without being aware of what was going on with their G-Pa.  When the paramedics took Robert’s blood pressure, it was extremely low.  After getting to the ER, he was assigned a room and within an hour his blood pressure was almost normal again without any medicines or fluids.  I believe just being able to lay down helped him a lot.  But because of his medical condition, the ER doctor ran all sorts of tests before starting him on fluids.  His white blood cell count is almost nonexistent, his red blood cell count is still low and his platelets had dropped again since Friday’s lab work so Robert got a bag of platelets before we left the ER.  By early afternoon, Robert was feeling fine, hungry and ready to come back to the hotel.  Of course, you know you never get out of the ER in a timely fashion.  After eight hours of being in the freezing ER room, he was finally released.  Robert was able to walk from the car to the hotel room without any problem.  He was hungry; wanted a burger so I went to Five Guys and got him a cheeseburger.  I was so proud that he ate almost the entire burger.  We both slept fairly well last night.  Our Sunday plans are to do very little.  This episode is very similar to the one Robert had back in February after his first cycle of chemo in Jackson.  

Please continue to pray for strength for Robert and for tolerance of all the medicines he now has to take.