Tag Archives: Gordon

Optimistic Discharged Composition

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Since his fever and headache are gone, and his blood cultures show no signs of infection, G was discharged from the hospital today. The nurses were sad to see him go, but this isn’t our first return home from a hospital stay, and may not be our last.

That may have read as pessimism, but we’re both feeling very optimistic today, for several reasons — a few seconds ago, Twitter erupted with the news that Barack Obama swept the 2008 Presidential Election. I’m hopeful for Obama’s presidency, but I’m never optimistic about politicians.

My real friends give me real hope.

DJ Lunchbox messaged me yesterday, asking if it would be cool if he were to visit G in the hospital today. Well, since we were discharged before Lunchbox got out of work, he came to our house instead. And since we were all hungry, the fridge was empty and my car battery is dead, he drove us to two supermarkets to do what will be the bulk of our grocery shopping for the month.

Lunchbox has actually done this once before, and then even cooked us dinner with the groceries. Today being Tuesday, he had to run to make the 8:00 live taping of the Wrestling Mayhem Show, so all he got was a ham sandwich on the go. Sure the guy is appropriately named to contain ham sandwiches, but his kind of friendship deserves something more substantial. He’ll take a rain check on the meal, but I thought it might be appropriate to end today’s post with a composition from his blog, Thoughtful Riot:

Good morning Captain
Glad to see your still with us
Stay on your feet sir

Waiting

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I just finished up some work and managed my inbox down to 0, and I’m feeling a little low on energy. I went down to the hospital cafeteria to get a green tea, since I don’t like to drink coffee while G is in the hospital, but picked up the more expensive Odwalla Superfood™ instead. Why? Because I’m not sure that even the small amount of caffeine in green tea is what I need right now, but I can use some antioxidants, vitamin C and other nutrients. Can’t we all?

I also grabbed the Superfood because I’ve had one before, and I can’t remember when. There may have been a story involved, and I’m waiting to recall it. If I can’t, this post may go nowhere. I can’t think in this waiting room anyway; I’m going to go for a walk to get away from the crying, germy baby…

…I remember. I had a bottle of this stuff when I was recovering from food poisoning, and I didn’t feel like eating. I was working from the Lawrenceville Crazy Mocha with Justin Kownacki, and there is no story involved.

My walk took me to the chapel, where I’ve gone before at times like this.

It’s very quiet, and always empty. This is a solemn place from which to blog. I prayed, I read, I listened, and I waited; these are the things to do here. I prayed for G, who has been having a difficult time today, physically and emotionally. I prayed that he does the same, because I don’t have the answers that he’s waiting for.

Part of me thinks I should go to Church, and another part of me doesn’t agree with formal religion. I think both parts are waiting for each other…

Readmitted

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I’m writing my first NaBloPoMo post from The Western Pennsylvania Hospital, where G has been readmitted with a slight fever, a common sign of infection. Central line infections are common and he’s had several before, so we assumed that was the case when his temperature went up to 100.5 on Thursday night.

Doctors never assume; they test. To test for a line infection, blood cultures are taken from both the catheter and from a vein elsewhere in the body. If he does have an infection, he’ll get treated with the super-antibiotic vancomycin.

Since he would be in the hospital as an outpatient on Friday morning anyway, we spent the better part of Thursday night taking his temperature. Every 15 minutes or so, I would hover over him and silently watch the digital digits change, praying that they stop before a certain number and thinking how important numbers are in life.

We did end up paging the doctor on call, but luckily his temperature went down before we had to go to the emergency room.

The Emergency Room sucks, but readmission isn’t much better.

Being readmitted is a lot like being admitted for the first time, except you already have a bracelet. He was admitted over a month ago, discharged almost a week later, and he’s been an outpatient since. He was here yesterday, and he’s scheduled to be here on Monday morning. He’s here a lot. He knows a lot of nurses, and they know him.

But when he’s readmitted, nobody knows who he is. He’s in the system, he has a bracelet and has even memorized his medical file number, but none of the nurses or doctors know anything about him — especially on a Saturday night. Many of the residents don’t even know what TTP is, so G has to explain it to them.

And reexplain it. He has to answer the same questions again and again; questions I assume wouldn’t need to be asked had they read his charts. Tonight, they can’t even find his charts. I don’t want to complain about West Penn Hospital, because our experiences here have been far better than what I’ve heard about other hospitals, but I wonder every time why such an advanced institution doesn’t use their technology better.