a mystery

Stanley got a new moo valve Friday. He went in at about 9-9:30 and was out at 2:30ish pm. As I write this at about 2:30 am he is in the surgical ICU at Bridgeport Hospital. The cheer grams that he’s received so far were pinned to his bulletin board when he arrived on that unit. I read them to him and he smiled around the tube, but he was a lot nuts with morphine and pain so I’m sure he will want to read them for himself again. So he’ll get two smiles out of each of them—thank you!

When I left the ICU Friday evening, it was after an unsuccessful attempt to remove the breathing tube. Every time he dozed off, he stopped breathing. When I called at 10:15, they’d tried again, but no luck. Last time on the tube, it was very difficult for him as well so I’m not surprised. It was very hard to watch the struggle—I was glad to flee this evening and leave him to the nurses and respiratory therapist. But he was much, much more lucid when coming out of surgery than he was the last time—well, as lucid as you can be with a tube stuffed down your throat and pain at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10.

The operation went like clockwork and well, according to Dr. Robinson. I’m not sure when Stanley will be on the telemetry unit—hope on Saturday (likely) because that means no complications. He may not need the roto-rootering of his calf since his foot pulse is getting stronger each day.

The surgeons sent the broccoli off for culturing. The primary suspect is still Bartonella, though which strain, or even IF it’s Bartonella (cat scratch fever) is still a mystery. Whatever it is, it’s still one for the record books. Stanley keeps saying we’re in our own episode of House. At least I finally washed the dishes in the sink so that when Cameron and Chase show up to snoop, they won’t make snide remarks about it.

What really, really sucks about this is how unprepared I am for it. Last time, we knew in advance so we could clean the house up in advance, make arrangements about work stuff in advance, get all the bills dealt with. This time, none of that—as I was washing the dishes I was feeling very overwhelmed by it all, by the thought of having to manage most of our life on my own for the next few weeks, like taking out the trash and recycling and mowing ... though mowing sure beats shoveling out from yet another blizzard as I had to do in February 2005. I lost some weight then and the good news is that I’ve lost a couple of pounds already this time—just from walking all those corridors and trips to the parking garage. (Would rather just walk around the backyard a lot.)

I am glad my sister Maureen made the trip down to help me. I wouldn’t have been able to drive home Friday evening—at least not without some sleep, which would be hard to get in the incredibly uncomfortable waiting rooms at Bridgeport Hospital. So we atw dinner at Wild Oats (I had a wonderful pannini with pesto sauce, tomato, and mozzarella) and brought home decadent things for dessert (bear claws for me) and watched tv and talked. Which was good. Don’t get to talk with her as much as I like to.

I’m so tired everything looks blurry and my eyes are crossing. More when I can ... just very glad he’s on the “getting better” side of the ledger. Finally.

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