The Hunger Games

Two weeks ago, Rowdy was put on total parenteral nutrition, or TPN.  His caloric needs were carefully calculated by the hospital nutritionist.  A pharmacist makes a mixture of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates in batches of seven daily bags and ships them to our house once a week.  Every night, Rowdy squirts a syringe of multivitamins into the bag, hooks the bag up to tubing, runs the tubing through a pump and screws the end of the tube to his PICC line.  For the next 12 hours, the pump whirrs at regular intervals, delivering "pharmacist's milk" into his heart.

The physical hunger pangs go away, but the psychologic need to eat doesn't.  Maybe it even gets worse.  Rowdy was so good for the first ten days, but on Saturday, we stayed out a little long at a friend's birthday party, and I could tell that R's blood sugar was dropping.  He had some Dr. Pepper and a taste of frosting from the cake.  He had the sacrament bread on Sunday, but that is no big deal.  Yesterday, though, he just totally broke and had eggs, yakisoba, lemonade and pudding.

His fistulas had appeared to be healed since his first day on TPN, so it didn't seem like a big deal.  I mean, why not give it a trial and see if things are really healed up?  Well, the bummer is that, even though the fistula at his midline is acting 100 healed, the one to the right of midline popped open today and googed* a little bit.

That's made him angry and depressed and me just depressed.  Rowdy now has written on his wrist, "DON'T EAT'.

I am surprised at how much my own enjoyment of eating has decreased over the past couple of weeks.  A friend of mine whose husband also has Crohn's and was NPO for about a year (!) told me that she became a closet eater during that time, because she didn't want her husband to feel bad.  Rowdy told me at first that he didn't mind me eating, but I still felt guilty eating in front of him.

Lunch has become my main meal.  I go somewhere and try to have something big and well-balanced.  When I come home, I eat things that Rowdy wouldn't really like, like wheat toast and goat cheese, or soups that he wouldn't like.  Everything seems so blah, though.

Our team is having a big pasta party the night before the tri and a brunch right after.  I bought tickets a couple of months ago, not thinking that Rowdy wouldn't be able to come with me.  My friend, Amber, is going to be my date instead.  She's lots of fun and is probably going to do the tri, too, so that will be good.

I would really like Rowdy to be able to be there to share the experience with me, but at least he can come and cheer me on, since the race is in town.  It's not like Vegas where he couldn't even come with me.  That totally sucked. 

*very medical term, I know.