Back Home!
Turns out that Steve did not have an abdominal infection after all; whatever was going on with his white blood count resolved itself without intervention, so last Friday with everything else looking good he was cleared for discharge. Things are going well at home so far. The biggest challenges are keeping him well-nourished and gaining weight. So we’re trying to be creative with ways to pack on the calories and nutrients in enticing small bites (any suggestions?).
As always, we want to thank you all for sending love, healing thoughts, well wishes and prayers. As strong as we are as a family, you have bolstered that strength, and we can’t imagine doing this without your support.
A number of you have asked about bringing meals now that Steve is home again. For those of you who are local and close by, a meal train has been set up. If interested, please see the link below (you may need to copy and paste it):
https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/4925g8
Comments (21)
Please tell Steve that Lisa is so happy that he's home with his family and I'm still praying for you all. Tell him I'm smiling big for him as I type, that's what he told me to keep doing.
Praise the Lord! - David & Kathy Lewis
Our very best recovery is our wish for Steve! Glad he is at home getting TLC from his family. As to getting more calories ingested each day, liquid broths, power drinks (little or no sugar or salt), soups, and easily digestible egg dishes should help. Cheese is also a good soft source of energy, even low-fat varieties. Yogurt and ice cream may also help. Any combination of these sources should work--whatever he likes and may even enjoy at this stage. Fruits and vegetables are harder to digest and utilize unless pureed, at least until he heals more. Steve's hospital service dietitian may have other recommendations. Let's hope for good progress in getting back to health and strength, even if it is slow! Love to you all. John Anderson
Great ideas above, but focus should be on high calorie, high fat, and high protein food
Yay Yay Yay for Steve and You all.... we are sending Loving, healing, comforting, weight gaining energy everyday your Way.... Hang in there, Breath Awareness, and Gratitude can be helpful dealing with all of this REALLY HARD STUFF.... Much Love, Scotty and Diane
Excellent news!!!... so glad he is home and the infection has subsided... which is a very good sign... My mother was a nurse and she use to make milkshakes in the blender for patients that needed to gain weight and/or strength... with whole milk, ice cream, and raw eggs... with the shells... blend well [needless to say].. ALL ORGANIC .... use fruit if desired... WORKED EVERY TIME.. and who doesn't love an 'old fashioned' milk shake?! also, other things that could be added to 'bulk' up the vitamins...
Hi I couldn't log on to meal train can you email me? [email protected] I may be coming to Rockrest this weekend. I will explore some nourishing small bites. So glad you have Steve at home.
Hallelujah!!
PS Cookies, cake, ice cream!
Thinking of you all. Barbara Rimer
Great big sigh of gratitude. As a child, to gain weight, I drank a milkshake with raw egg every day after school....not sure it worked to gain weight, but I really enjoyed eating it!!! Maybe some peanut butter in the shake...high protein and makes for a really tasty treat. BEST TO YOU, STEVE. LOVELOVELOVE the Wing family.
hey Steve and gang ! so glad to hear the good news and hoping that the healing and strength are continuing right along, even more so now that you can be at home in your own beautiful "natural habitat" with all the beauty right outside your door and your lovely home with all the good vibes. We want to bring out something that you would enjoy and will think of something delicious that is not calorie conscious :) Meanwhile we send our love to you !
Keeping you all in our thoughts and prayers as Steve gains strength. Sending lots of love and healing energy to you!!!
Great news!!! Thank you for the update!
I am so happy for all of you that Steve is better and at home. I know anything like ice cream is what I try not to eat when overweight. The milkshake!smoothie ideas appeal most to me and I like the suggestion of talking to the UNC dietitian so that nothing inadvertently irritates the digestive tract. Love to all of you. Stephen
I'm so glad that there wasn't an infection and that Steve is back home. The weather is lovely outside and I hope he can sit in the sun and soak up the healing rays. Mary Anne
So glad to hear some positive news. Hopefully some sunshine and all these well wishes, not to mention the wonderful family support you have, will bring you through this very quickly and infuse you with the healing you deserve. Now Steve, if only you had been researching something useful like weight and nutrition transference, I might be able to transfer some of my very UNneeded weight over to you and make up for all of your deficiencies in this area. I'd even be willing to eat extra ice cream so that I wouldn't run out of what you need! When you get better, please get started on this important research area. I will gladly serve as volunteer zero for you and am sure we can get accelerated IRB approval if you can just frame the research question with sufficient caveats about risks, costs, etc. Okay, hopefully this nonsense at least brought you a laugh for today. Miss you a ton and am looking forward to the days when you are healthy again and we can meet for lunch that you can actually enjoy! Love and hugs, Nancy
On another note, Steve.... I've been meaning to write to you for a long time and was either too lazy, too busy, too distracted, too.... Now it occurs to me that this public forum is a perfectly fine place for what I wanted to tell you personally (you will surely cringe at the "public display," but please forgive me). I am so grateful to you for being the person you are. Over our almost 30 years of knowing each other, there have been many times when we disagreed about issues. Truthfully though, as we talked things through I always ended up feeling we weren't as far as apart in our views as it appeared on the surface. What is important in this is not whether or not we had similar views. The important thing is that we were always able to talk and you never, ever made me feel diminished as an individual no matter how erroneous you may have considered my "knowledge" to be. In this era where everyone is so quick to label alternative viewpoints as ignorant or stupid or bigoted, this nonjudgmental, humanistic, respectful approach that is the essence of who you are is HUGE! It allows for real discourse instead of simply politically correct rhetoric. When we have respectful sharing of thoughts, we actually open each other up to the possibility of learning from one another and understanding what leads the other person to his or her belief system. I believe this is essential for true learning and for enabling positive changes in the world. Sadly, I have observed the world of public health to be quite lacking in this quality. One only has to spend a little time on Facebook (if you don't know what Facebook is, ask one of your daughters. ha ha!) to see how quickly some people are to say "I'm unfriending her/him" because s/he believes x, y, or z. How does one teach or guide anyone that way? I know for sure that if someone labels my thoughts as stupid or ignorant, I am going to shut down and dig in my heels. However, when I say I believe "x" and the other person says s/he believes "y" because of "z," it's amazing how often we discover that "x" and "y" are actually side by side. Okay, I'm lousy with analogies, but you get the point. Okay, this has been a verbose way of saying "Thank you, Steve, for being you."
Hello Steve - I hope you are feeling better. We all miss you! Gregg
so glad to hear this good news! sending you all lots of love... Cynthia & Ken
Very glad to hear this. Sending Steve and all of you all of my most healing thoughts! ps - saw the article in the UNC magazine - nice profile, Steve!