Day 61, Year 7: A Little Blip . . . Now Back on Track
Date: Sunday, January 8, 2012
Weather: Mixed Sun and Clouds with Temps in the 40’s
Location: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
Mark is still making great post-surgery progress. He has no pain and feels
good. Today they disconnected the epidural and the iv for feeding, so Mark
no longer has to walk around with a metal pole on rollers to hold all this
apparatus. He is still on a diet of clear liquids like chicken broth and
Jello and they are giving him a pain medication orally. At this point
things are going along better than we expected, but last night after I sent
the log we did have a little blip that caused some drama. But it was just
that-a little blip. Mark had been sitting up for some time and hadn’t had
an afternoon nap. I wanted to talk him on one more walk before I left for
the night, but we barely got out of the door of his room when we had to turn
around. He was shaky and as weak as kitten. We called the nurse and found
that his temperature had gone above the 102 mark, and that necessitated
calling in a doctor. There was a young resident on the floor and he checked
all of the incisions and found no redness. He ordered blood and urine tests
and a chest x-ray. I didn’t really want to leave Mark for the night so I
drove to Sue and John’s to get some clean clothes and eat a little dinner.
By the time I returned to spend the night in the room with Mark, he seemed
much better. After all was said and done, it appears that the temperature
was just a normal post-surgery thing. I personally think Mark is suffering
a bit from going into surgery with a slight cold, and because of that his
lungs are having a harder time of recovering. The doctors and nurses just
tell him to keep moving around and using a little breathing tube that forces
him to breathe more deeply. He doesn’t particularly like the “game” of
keeping the little white ball afloat but he is getting better at it. The
temperature has gone down slowly today and if all seems normal I will drive
home to the Cape tonight. I have a 9:15 am physical exam that I don’t dare
miss. It took months to get the appointment so I want to be there. This
will give me a chance to check on Windbird to make sure all is well on the
home front. I think I’ll miss the check-in with Mark’s surgeon tomorrow
morning, but Mark promises to listen carefully and give me a full report.
Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah came to visit today. Mark was so excited to
see the boys and go on a walk with them. Jonah liked the walking and Sam
liked seeing the sights. The halls here have wonderful photographs and
paintings of buildings and scenes in Boston and it was also fun to identify
those. Sam sat by the window in Mark’s room and watched the cars on the
highway below. He was amazed at how small the cars looked from this high
up. He exclaimed that they look like Matchbox cars, and indeed, they do.
And both boys enjoyed watching Granddad trying to keep the ball afloat in
the breathing tube. We all (except for Mark, of course) went out to lunch
and when we returned, the daytime nurse, Lauren, had popsicles for Sam and
Jonah. They loved that! So hopefully their hospital visit was fun for them
as well as Granddad. Later in the afternoon Mark’s hospital phone rang. I
heard him say to the person on the other end that it was certainly wonderful
to hear a voice from the past. It was cousin of mine from West Virginia,
David Bowers, who unbeknownst to us has been faithfully reading Windbird’s
logs. He read the log I posted on Friday with Mark’s hospital phone number
and he decided to give us a call. When Mark and I moved to Wikel in West
Virginia in 1979, David was married with two young children and lived close
to the farm we bought there. It was close enough that once in a while our
‘free-range’ chickens layed eggs under David’s front porch! We haven’t seen
him for over fifteen years so we talked on and on about friends and family
in Wikel and how things have changed over the years. It made me very
homesick for a place and the people there that are very dear to my heart.
Thanks for the call, David.
Now it’s time for me to head to Cape Cod and look for that full moon on the
way.
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| 120108 Day 61 MGH, Boston, MA–HJJ&S Visit Granddad |
