The Long and Winding Road

I haven't updated in a few days, mostly because I've been spending nearly all my free time either sleeping (selfish me!) or at the hospital.

I'll try to remember what's happened this week.

May 7 - Mr. C finally got into surgery for the hip repair. Three long hours of waiting, and I got the good news that he made it through just fine. They were still concerned about his heart, but doing the least invasive hip repair with screws seems to have been a good course of action. It's not 100% but at least it can give him a good start to get back on his feet again.

The anesthesia did a horrible job on him mentally however. He was completely delusional, believing that people were dying, he was needed to repair something, and other random paranoid episodes. He had to be physically restrained by me or else he would have been out of the bed, and most likely falling and who knows, breaking the other hip maybe. It was bad, horrible, and heartbreaking. I talked to the nurses who seemed at a loss for what to do, and informed them about Lewy Body Dementia and how unless he was in extreme danger, he should not get any antipsychotics. Good thing, cause that was their plan of action. Instead they decided to try some pain relief and thankfully he calmed down quite a bit.

May 8 - Mr. C was still kind of out of it but looking better mostly. Physical therapy came and had him out of bed twice and he was even eating well.

May 9 - Mr. C looked pretty good today, more calm, less pain and had eaten well. Physical therapy came for his workout and tired him right out. He was sleeping the whole time I visited at night.

May 10 - Not a good day. I got a call from Dr. Emery about Mr. C. He started having chest pains after breakfast and they rushed him to the CCU. He was stable, but having sinus tachycardia and they didnt like the look of his EKG. Some nitro, some aspirin, and heparin later, things started to level out. I sat with him from 1 to 9pm and he would keep having apnea episodes of 20 or more seconds every few minutes. They have him on oxygen too, just to make sure he stays up in the high 90's instead of bottoming out when he stops breathing. Honestly I thought this was it. I didn't want to go home because I kept thinking I'd just be getting a call in the middle of the night or something.