Spent pretty much entire day at the hospital with Bill. He was transferred out of the ICU late Tuesday evening and into a telemetry unit on the 7th floor (# 7784), several doors down from his old room. Since Bill is able to breathe on his own, the doctors apparently felt he was stable enough to be out of the ICU. The new room is pretty much like all the others, but a bit smaller with more wear and tear.
About 9am I received a call from Bill's new doctor, Joel Ramirez, and we met at 11.30am. He's a young doctor with a great bed side manner. His agenda: discharge goals. As far as they are concerned Bill's heart, lungs, and kidneys have achieved, more or less, maximum level of stabilization achievable at the hospital.
Bill was in a subdued state much of today. Didn't seem to have much pain but also was less engaged and less lively. He lost his speech again and his perceptual and mental confusion (i.e., mistaking sounds of vacuum cleaners as sounds of water rushing in, asking how he got where he was, etc.), was discouraging. On other hand, he correctly named Frank Lloyd Wright's house in view, as Hollyhock house, when I was confused about it.
We listened to one of Shelly's hypnosis tapes (about loving yourself, burying baggage) on the nice CD player Arlene had bought, and both of us kind of dozed at the end of it. We had a team of three nurses (Ric, Laura, and Matt, the main nurse, new nurse in the hospital, and a student nurse in training respectively). Ric was very good and had a light unassuming approach. At the end of the day, I walked over to the charge nurse asking Ric to be Bill's nurse again tomorrow. Wish granted, the charge nurse said.
The nurses brought in the cardiac chair and Bill was eager to be on it. We wheeled it in front of the large glass window. We looked at the Barnsdall Park trees, admired Hollyhock house, and talked about the weather. I read him pretty cards recently arrived from Betsy and a handmade card on a yellow cardstock paper with someone's beautiful, but unsigned handwriting. Bill's attention tended to ebb and flow; but he was intermittently persistent in wanting food. I admit I did something that might have made his hunger for real food much worse: Having had a stomach virus and therefore not having eaten anything previous day, I was very hungry and brought a bagle along to the hospital room. I caught Bill throwing a longing glance..
While Bill was able to sit in the cardiac chair for two hours (when I left he was still going strong), he still is unable to even shift any part of his body (save his left arm), much less getting in or out of the chair on his own.
I arranged a meeting with Dr. Phot Luisiri, Bill's rheumatologist tomorrow AM. I am concerned that he has not been much involved. I will urge him again to talk to Dr. Furst about experimental drugs.
By 4/10/11, Bill will be over his bacteremia completely and will no longer require visitors to wear gowns and gloves. This also means the nursing home of our choice would be more likely to take him on as a patient.
Abby will be back tomorrow.
Kris
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