One of the first things I do every morning is check the weather.

This is what I saw, yesterday morning.

Just so you know, 46C is 114F.

The error even stayed there for most of the day. LOL

It’s possible it was accidentally in Fahrenheit, which would make it about 8C, but we didn’t have a high of 8C the day before – we barely got above 0C – so that doesn’t make sense, either.

At least it was good for a giggle!

We’ll take what we can get! ;-)

As usual, I headed into town early in the day, in hopes of being there when the doctor came by. After his last visit, my husband was really hoping to get discharged, but when the nurse came by with his medications, she had nothing like that on her paperwork.

Of course, the doctor didn’t come by until after I’d left. I ended up coming back again later, to get the full story.

Short version: my husband may be in for another week or week and a half.

True, there is nothing they can really do for him right now. True, the stuff they are waiting to get him in for can be done on an outpatient basis. True, my husband could sign some papers and discharge himself. But they want to be able to monitor him, and work to improve the percentage of his heart function (not mentioning that they can’t come up with a treatment plan until the angiogram is done).

Frustrated as he was about it all, my husband also wants to be a good patient, and he will be staying. There are a number of practical reasons for that, besides them being able to monitor him. If he were at home and had a sudden decline, it would be at least half an hour to get him into the van and back to the hospital. Assuming I could. If we had to call an ambulance, it would probably take more than an hour, if not longer. Not only that, but because we live on the West side of the highway, any ambulance would actually be from the town my mother lives in, not the one he’s in now, which is farther away. Then they’d have to go through the whole process of going through emergency and re-admitting him. Right now, he’s settled into a private room, they can monitor his vitals, weigh him daily, keep his medications up, monitor his blood sugars, and monitor his fluid intake – thankfully, his dancing partner is now gone, so no more measuring of fluids in the catheter bag to compare. Still, when he was weighed yesterday morning, he’d lost another 5 pounds, and by this morning, he was down another 2 pounds, and that was taken after he had breakfast, so he probably lost more. He’s looking almost normal again, though after being so swollen for so long, then losing so much fluid weight, parts of him are rather droopy! ;-) It’ll be a while before that will correct itself.

Another other benefit to staying is that he’s in a very compact situation, with everything he needs, nearby. While our home has arm bars and other mobility aids, some things just can’t be adapted – like the 2 steps he’d have to take to get from the old part of the house, where the bedrooms and bathroom are, and the new, where the living and dining rooms are – and he still tires very easily.

So now we just wait until they get word from the city about the angiogram, and for when they can drain that pocket of fluid in his abdomen under guided imagery.

For me, it does mean I simply can’t be coming in twice a day anymore; we just can’t afford the gas. I will still be coming in daily, for as long as I can.

I can hardly wait for him to come home. Home feels empty without him.

The Re-Farmer