Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Tuesday, February 6, 2019, 1:00 pm


HE IS CURRENTLY IN ROOM 318 A

Good news:  He continues to be stable. He has not been put back on the bi-pack breathing mask. He has been able to maintain his oxygen level using the high volume nasal cannula.  (Those nose thingies you see on folks who walk around carrying oxygen tanks.)
-He has been sleeping.!!!!! For the first time in 10 days, he has been sleeping on his own without being knocked out with drugs.

Bad news: The diarrhea is back. Liquids continue to build up in his lungs, and he doesn’t have the strength to cough it out.

Scary news: He is off the antibiotics as of this evening.  Will he or will he not start running a temperature that tells us there is an infection in his body?  This is a possible crisis point. 

For starters, he will be remaining in room 318A. Someone told me that he would be moved, but it wound up he was referring to Mike’s roommate.  I was sitting in a chair between the two men.  The other guy was an 81-year-old toothless Asian man with dementia.  Mike still has a lot of dark hair. I think the guy thought Mike was too young to be the husband of that white-haired lady.  Good enough! He is on the telemetry floor. The right place for him to be.  He still has a sitter. However, now there is one for the two men in the room.  Probably why they put him in a double room: better use of the sitter.
            Our friend B was finished with appointments around 3:30. I ran into him as I returned to Mike’s room.  He was on his phone with his step-mom.  His dad is recovering from a stroke, a bleeder. His step-mom shared her story of taking care of him and updating me on his progress.  I have never had so many people fall ill around me in my life. What is going on? 
When we got back to Mike’s room, he was awake. He spoke to B briefly.  He face lacked animation.  Exhaustion or drugs? I don’t know. B offered to send pictures of back home.  Did Mike want any?  Mike said, send a picture of someone cleaning his tush.  Such a joy to hear Mike joking about his situation. Adjusting to being in diapers and unable to get out of bed and get himself to a toilet was a biggie for him.  I am so proud of him.
            When B visited before his appointments, he said he should have brought stuff over for me from the house.  Ah!  I should give him the things I don’t need that I already had in shopping bags ready to mail home.  So B is now our transport system. Of course, this is all possible because he’s wrestling with his own medical problems.
            I left the hospital shortly after B did. I hung on a little longer today, 4:30 to a quarter of 5 rather than 3, and was less tired when I did leave. Returning to the car, I got off two floors earlier and walked down around the edge so I could see nature. I make a point of parking where I can pull straight into the parking space.  It’s one of those parking lots with massive pillars and three cars in each bay.  I driving a Turo rental, don’t want to do any damage.  I wouldn’t want to anyway for my sake, but now I have to worry about Keith having a car out of commission and unable to earn money. As I drove up to the exit, I stopped to visit my waterfall.  Well, maybe not.  I spoke to Dr. Lau about it.  He knew about it.  It’s Hawaii. Being unnaturally attached to nature is the norm here.  I bet every employee in the hospital knows about the waterfall.   It’s just a trickle, but it’s a 10 to 20-foot drop.
            Because Mike is no longer in the ICU, I no longer am entitled to a validated parking ticket allowing me to park for free.  The full fee would have been a whopping $7.  The maximum fee for the hospital parking lot is $10.  The attendant asked me why my ticket wasn’t validated.  Did she remember me?  I didn’t recognize her. Oh, well.  She said I could get my\ticket validated, so it wouldn’t cost me more than $3 because I was a visitor. She then told me I could actually buy a 10 pack for $30 and told me where to get it.  In the meantime, she only charged me $3.  I must look terrible.
             I thought to go check out the Bikram studio on my way home, where I’m hoping to do some classes but decided I was too tired even to drive there.  As it was, the normally 15-minute drive from the hospital to the Bnb took 45 minutes.  However, I had company in the form of classical Mongolian throat singers on the HPR classical music station. Wow! I had a sound bath.  The vibrations touched every cell in my body and relaxed me.  I stopped off at Safeway to buy some food and went home. I got into bed immediately at 6 pm.     
            I woke up at 10:30pm.   This is a new pattern for me.   Worry provoked me to get up. I know Mike has diarrhea and is getting off the antibiotics, and I’m worried. I don’t so much feel guilty as I feel scared, scared that something is wrong, and no one will notice.  Pretty much the same fears he has, although I assured him he has nothing to worry about.  Fortunately, I can speak to a nurse 24/7.  I called. The big good news is that he is sleeping.  Wow! Wow! Wow!
Now, let’s see what tomorrow brings. 

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