Randy's MDS and Camping ...Who Knows?????

We could hardly wait for summer. Camping season. Randy had been so tired. Well his hip hurt and he walked wobbly. One leg was longer than the other. He figured that was tiring him out and I am sure that added to it. He kept plugging along doing things that needed doing around here and paying for it later with constant pain and crippling fatigue. It got so he could not walk without a walker or some support if he had to walk very long. I had to walk very slow because he was always so far behind and believe me, I am a slow walker! Testoterone shots helped a lot at first. But then did not seem to later on. Well, he says and Matt agreed, a motorhome would be so much easier for him to set up than and truck and trailer. So we found a used motorhome we liked and traded in our truck and trailer. We were so ...excited. We already had three camping trips set up. A couple of weeks before our first camping trip, Randy began to experience terrible mouth pain and loss of appetitie. He lived on liquid. He thought it was his bad dentures and he got new ones, he also had a bone coming out on the roof of his mouth and the dentist fixed it and said it should heal. But his mouth just would not heal. We filled out motohome up with food and out we went for our first trip of the season in our new motorhome. It was so exciting. We took my little cat Gimli as we had before and he is a great camping companion. However, he got scared when Randy took him outside to put him in the motorhome and he scratched Randy. Randy got antibiotics and a shot but the scratch got much worse as well as his mouth did. He also had cat scratches from many months ago that had not healed and his toes were red and infected. We enjoyed our camping trip as much as we could at Crystal Hot Springs despite the fact the Randy was so tired and had no appetitie. So when it ended, we still had most of our food because Randy did not want to eat.
The cat scratch on his hand had because so much worse. It looked like a Brown Recluse had bitten him. His toes and feet were bad and he had a long scractch on his leg that he had gotten several months ago while moving a bed. Anyway, we had another camping trip set up so we went even tthough Randy was not feeling well at all. He tried to make the best of it. We enjoyed Matt and Kelly Jo Grace Carrillos company and Tina and her family as well at the campground. A few more days passed at the campground. Randy could hardly function and spent most of his time in the chair or going to bed really early. He went to bed really early every night. He was losing weight as well. The campground was not too far from the DR so he went in and after a blood test and seeing all of Randy's sores, the DR became very concerned. He said Randy's white and red blood cells were both low and abnnormal and put him in the hospital. We had to cut our camping trip short by 7 days but at least we got to see several deer. And we brought home a motorhome full of food. Next I will write about the diagnosisgnosis.


In May 2012, Randy Minor was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) In order to keep everyone up to date and aware of this disease that nobody really has heard of and to keep a record of Randy's day to day trials with this disease, I am starting this journal. This journal can be posted to and will be private from other folks on FB. I am hoping all of you will get to know a little more about the disease and what our life now entails. I am also writing a history of how we found out about his diagnosis.



Rita

Myelodysplastic Syndrome