Wednesday

Well as a I sat down to write this the fire alarm went off. Rebecca had just left to go down stairs and get some milk, and mom and dad aren’t here. I kinda giggled cause the elevators don’t work during a fire alarm so they won’t be able to get up here for a while. Me, being the cop, walked out into the hallway to investigate and got yelled at to shut my door. Don’t they know I am a…..they might but right now it is meaningless. All about perspective. I still can’t tell you what it’s like outside right now. Looks pretty from the window. They did say that maybe later today or tomorrow I can walk outside. Would be nice.

My post from yesterday turned out to be a little misleading. As the day progressed I felt worse. I spent most of the afternoon sleeping. I guess it finally caught up with me. I didn’t fell horrible, just no energy. The main thing I am dealing with right now is shortness of breath. The way it was explained to me was the drugs cause my body to retain a lot of extra fluid which in turn puts pressure on my body one of the results being the shortness of breath. They have me doing breathing treatments three times a day. Which is a great gesture but not really much help. Right now it is better. In case your curious the parade of folks in and out of the room starts around 4 am each day. From 4 until around noon it is non-stop. Today for example the nurse started at 4 am. Then comes the person who takes my blood pressure, temperature, pulse ox, and weight. Then comes the next person with a breathing treatment. Then the day shift nurse comes in and introduces themselves and goes over the plan for the day. Then another lady came in and took more blood. At some point a physicians assistant will come in and go over where my levels are at and let us know how everything is going. Then shortly after that a doctor will come in and do the same thing. They have all been great. They have made things so much easier. They treat us everyday with kindness and compassion, answer our questions, and listen to us. It makes a huge difference.

So the tentative plan for today is let the last course of drugs go through my body, continue to keep and eye on my vitals and see where things stand tomorrow. I have the catheter in my arm that will stay in place until this whole mess is over. One of the things we will have to be very careful of is infection. It will have to be flushed and cleaned and bandaged once a week even while at home. Which means Rebecca and Mom are having to go to two different classes on how to do it. Then, later today, they will have to actually perform the procedure in front of the nurse before they will let me go. We will be here at least through tomorrow. We may be released tomorrow or Friday depending on how much my swelling goes down. Once released, we will have to come back to the hospital once or twice more to have blood work done to make sure all of my “levels” are stable. It is looking like we will most likely be able to leave for Tulsa on Monday or Tuesday. (As I say that the nurse just took my blood pressure and it was too high so who knows) That’s it for now. I feel better today and am grateful. It has not been fun, but it could have been a lot worse. I will let everyone know more as we do.

Remember each day to put one foot in front of the other, drink a lot of water and don’t forget to breath…………..