Hi Liz -

I read your blog, and I'm in awe at the courage it must have taken to write it. Russ has been in a skilled nursing facility for 3 weeks now. Week one was pretty much working out the pain control issues, and I have to say that they've been doing a fantastic job of controlling it. He was highly agitated, and sleepless, getting up and pacing and literally trying to rearrange his room several times a day. When I'd leave for a time, I'd come back to play "where're the clothes" and would find them stuffed everywhere in his room, and he'd have no memory of doing so. He's already on 200mg of Fentanyl, and is receiving liquid morphine through his PEG tube evey 2 hours, with oxycodone for breakthrough. Week 2 started with the development of the ulcerations, and now they are as described in your blog, except that they're still confined above the jawbone, though they extend to both sides of the face, and are joining into one big one that requires huge dressings. What breaks my heart is that he cannot talk because there's so much involvement in the inside of the mouth that his tongue is useless. Coupled with the tracheotomy, all I can hear Like your husband, he has a huge problem with drainage, and receives all nourishment and fluids through his PEG. These past several days, he's been sleeping more and more, though it's a more of a fitful, twitchy doze, and he's perspiring a lot because of the morphine. He's so out of it most of the time that I wonder if he realizes I'm there, and he hallucinates a lot.