Wednesday, December 22

Today marks two weeks since Dad's heart attack. There were not a lot of changes in Dad again -- his oxygen is back at 50%, but we think they just upped it to make him a little more comfortable. He had awful hiccups earlier today, but when I saw him after they'd raised the oxygen the hiccups were gone, so maybe that helped. They also increased the PEEP (some kind of pressure on his airways) to give him a little more support. None of these are setbacks, just fine tuning. He coughed up a lot of gunk today, on his own, not with the help of suctioning -- Mom and the nurses both hope this means the pneumonia is starting to break up. Let's hope so!

Everyone around us seems to be sick or on the verge of it, on top of being overwhelmingly busy with the holidays. And Katie, despite being busy, ventured out, but was impeded by horrendous traffic. So I was the only one besides Mom who made it into the hospital today, and I only managed the first two visits. Dad was awake for the earlier visit (he even nodded in response to my surprised, inane, "Are you awake??" when I arrived) so Mom and I had a nice time then and stayed well past the official end of visiting time.

There's a decorated tree in the house now -- it's a smallish one, nothing like the sprawling balsams of past years, but an easy one to decorate and maintain in a house that will see only limited Christmas celebrations. The real Christmas will be when Dad comes home, so Mom understandably wants to keep things simple.