Dad

Yesterday I arrived in Corpus to visit Dad in the hospital. My mom wasn't sure if I would be allowed in, but they let me in because I was immediate family. They won't even allow flowers to be delivered to his room! He's currently in isolation because he has flu-like symptoms. They had a woman die of pneumonia a couple days ago (a complication from swine flu) so they are taking extra precautions. I had to gown up and wear a mask the entire time I was in the room and they told me that if I wanted to touch Dad, then I had to wear gloves. How scary is that? Dad looked extremely tired and was coughing horribly. He's on oxygen full-time because his lungs are too full of gunk for him to breathe fully. For whatever reason, he's on a liquid diet. The pulmonologist said that he could go back to regular food, but the orders didn't go through in time so poor Dad got liquids for dinner again. He was so tired of eating it, that he only ate half of a popsicle before we left. He wasn't allowed to eat anything after midnight because he was getting a bronchoscopy in the morning. Mom and I stayed until about 7 o'clock. He got all his meds and then rested. We went to go eat at Chili's before making the hour drive home.

This morning, we headed back to the hospital. Dad was supposed to get a bronchoscopy so that they could look into his lungs and get a sample of the infection. That way, they can culture the sample and figure out what's causing the pneumonia. The pulmonologist told us that is was very unusual for someone Dad's age to get double pneumonia. It will be 2 to 4 days before they will get results from it, so it will be a hard wait. If nothing grows, then that means the treatment he's on (heavy antibiotics) are working. If something grows, then they will know the cause and an adjust treatment accordingly. While he was getting scoped, they also flushed out his bronchi with fluid. Dad said he was awake the entire time and it was weird, but not too freaky. When he got back in the room, the coughing had subsided tremendously (because of the flushing) and he looked okay. He seems to be feeling better today and he looked more alert. His flu test came out negative, which was no surprise. He had already been swabbed last Friday and that had been negative, too. He was tested for swine flu but that has to be sent somewhere else in the state and it takes several days to get the results. Even if it came out positive, I'm sure he's past the contagious stage anyway. His blood pressure was elevated, so he was given some medicine in addition to his regular blood pressure medicine. The best part of today was seeing Dad's face when they finally brought him some "real" food at 7pm. He was so excited to eat something other than soup or popsicles! Mom and I stayed with him until about 7:30 and then we headed out to get some food. We had only eaten breakfast this morning so we were starving.

We went to Olive Garden because that sounded good for some reason. Today is my Mom's birthday so I bought her dinner and then I got each of us a pint of ice cream to eat at home. We finished the night eating Rocky Road out of the container while watching the news.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. I really appreciate it! I'll update again when I can.