More hospital than Olaf can stomach... (Clint's Version)

It appears that Olaf will be stuck in the hospital for at least two days. This is due to the fact that he just got his stomach feeding tube installed this morning, and thankfully not due to any other new nasty side effect of his treatment.

I had the pleasure of getting to visit with him a bit this afternoon. I am always sort of stuck between wanting to visit Olaf and worrying about bothering him if he is resting, sleeping, or generally feeling too terrible to want to see anyone (last night was unfortunately one of those cases.. a really terrible night I am told). I miss seeing him regularly as we have essentially spent every working day together here at the studio over the last decade. When I did get to see him today, he was looking tired and thin, but it made me feel good just to hang out with him for an hour or so, and I hope he felt the same way. I mentioned to him that it is a pity that the hospital has no internet he can use as several people have wondered when a new blog update might happen, and how he is doing. 'Well, do an entry for me.' he replied.

So here is a temporary update from my perspective. As indicated above, Olaf has finally got his feeding tube installed which should remedy the fact that he has not been able to eat for the last week or so. Unfortunately there appear to be wide variety of complications that can occur when someone who has not eaten for 8 or 9 days starts injecting food directly into their stomach, hence he is not really allowed to 'eat' with it until late in the weekend, and has been told that he needs to stay in the hospital for another 48 hours or more ( ...there were big discussions between Olaf and the nursing staff on this point). The installation of the feeding tube has really buoyed his spirits as it solves a big problem that has been getting him down (starvation) and seems to point to a time when the medical procedures will start remedying things instead of trying to just kill the cancer by almost killing him. The bad is that Olaf is not terribly happy about being stuck in the hospital, does not appreciate the 'company' of the other people in his room (see Ange's last post). However, the net effect seems to be positivish.

We talked quite a bit about how after today there will only be 5 radiation treatments left, and all the treatment will end next Friday. I got the impression from him that for the first time in two weeks this process was finally starting to feel finite.