The Weekend

Well, on Dad's one month anniversary of his heart attack, he was rewarded with his very own room, *not* in CICU!!! He has been moved up to the sixth floor (the pulminary wing) where everything seems strange. At least to us, it does. There is carpet in the halls and warm, colorful paint on the walls. It's all much less clinical and sterile looking. This is a huge step, because it means he really is on his way to recovery. Of course, as Amy said, "are WE ready for this?" We miss the nurses and staff in CICU terribly, because they were all so friendly and helpful and calm and efficient. Not that they aren't on the 6th floor, but since Dad doesn't need the round-the-clock care he was needing before, they are a little more scarce. They only show up every few hours or so, unless you call them. And then when you *do* call them, they seem to take forever to answer and show up. I'm sure that's just my perception, though. I don't mean to bash them--they are very busy, with many patients to care for (as opposed to the one or two per in CICU), and they have been very friendly and knowledgeable. We've just been spoiled. I'm sure I'll adjust. But don't they realize that Dad is their most important patient?!

On the health front, Dad appears to be improving by leaps and bounds. He has been fairly alert each time I've been in, and more and more aware of everything. He also seems to be retaining any new information we give him, so his short-term memory doesn't seem to be a problem. Yesterday he developed some irritation around his trache tube, so they took the block off. It was actually pretty gross--because every time he coughed there was blood mixed in with the mucous, which they assured us was not from his lungs, but from this irritation. Today he was much better. The phleghm was a little pink from time to time, but all in all much better looking. The speach pathologist (who is taking care of his swallowing tests and his trache block) said he could have the block back if he wanted, but he decided to wait another day, until the irritation is completely healed. They also decided to wait another day to continue with the swallowing tests, because he was experiencing quite a bit of nausea today. I'm not sure if it was from all the coughing he was doing or what, but he kept worrying that he was going to throw up. Although he never did--at least not while I was there. He was also quite concerned about his diarrhea, from the c. dif. bacterium. We keep assuring him that it will go away, it's just a side effect. It's really neat to be able to say how he thinks he's doing. For so long now we've been reporting how we think he's doing or how the nurses think he's doing. But now he's able to say first-hand what's going on. I get the impression, though, that he thinks he's a lot worse off than he is. Or maybe he thinks he's exactly as bad off as he is, but since he wasn't aware of just how bad he really was for the past month, this seems awful to him, but fabulous to us! To me, at this point, he really seems to be making great improvements.

They did a CAT scan Friday night to test for a stroke. And now they're going to do an MRI to confirm whatever the result of the CAT scan was. But we haven't seen a doctor to tell us the results of the CAT scan, so we ultimately have no idea what's going on in that arena. An internist was supposed to come by today to explain the CAT scan to Mom, but no one had shown up by the time I left, a little after 4.

I think that's all to report at this point. With any luck I will hear from Mom tonight with the results of the CAT scan, and I can post those.