Chapter 4 - The Holiday Season

Thanksgiving passed well, so much to be thankful for. I remember sitting at the table with my Mom, who was 85 and my brother Jim. And as I write this today I realize that everyone who was sitting at that table in November of 1995 died in the last 2 ½ years; Mother and Jim within 7 weeks of each other, earlier this year. I’m the only one left.

Anyway, I remember Jim wanting each of us to say before the meal, what we were thankful for. Charles was thankful for the American Biologics Hospital; I was thankful for friends and for Charles.

One of the medications that had been so helpful in Charles’ recovery was a substance only available from Austria and it was expensive. Whereas medications are normally less expensive in Mexico, because this one was imported, they had to pay duties and other fees and it brought the price up to $100 per 5ccs (one injection) In order to get it less expensively, you could contact the manufacturer directly. So, at 3:00am one morning, I called the company in Vienna and got the procedure. I needed to fax an order to the pharmacy and then wire funds from my bank to theirs. As soon as their bank verified funds, they would ship the precious vials. Each time I did this, it was $1,000. That bought 20 vials, enough for two rounds of treatment. He needed a shot every other day for 20 days, then 21 days off. In the beginning, my friend Carol, a nurse in her former life, would come and give him the shots. 

One day Charles said "you know, you could give me these shots; you can learn how to do this". I was petrified, but Charles had total confidence in me. So Carol began teaching me with a water-filled syringe and an orange. After several days, it was time for me to try it myself. Carol was going to oversee, but she was delayed and I had to do it alone. On the first attempt, the needle bounced off; I cringed "Did you feel that?" He hadn’t. The second attempt was more successful, but the shots were 5ccs and difficult to do slowly enough so it didn’t hurt. Charles would tell me when he could feel it and I would slow down. Success!  It felt like an eternity, but I did it!   I felt obliged to tell him: "Honey, your butt ain’t no orange!"  Another hurdle conquered; I could give shots! 

Early December came and Charles progressed, but something new had been added, pain in his chest. Prior to this, he had no pain.  There were several visits to Dr. Armold; we were having a very heavy air pollution season. In Phoenix, the dirty air created during the day gets trapped in the valley by cool air at night and we experience inversions. Dr. Armold felt that Charles had developed a type of asthma and wrote a prescription for it. But nothing seemed to really help. We finally had another x-ray done and the results came back very well, not really even a mention of a mass in the lung, so we progressed on just trying to find something that would ease his breathing.

I have no recollection of Christmas that year. None.
 

The Next Chapters:

• Chapter 5 - The New Year 
• Epilogue 

The Previous Chapters:

• Chapter 1 - The Beginning 
• Chapter 2 - The Journey 
• Chapter 3 - The Mexican Experience