Angie & Jim

A Long-Expected Visitby Jim

Last year when we were in the hospital, I noticed an interesting sign posted in the hallway as I was leaving Angie’s room.  I snapped a photo on my phone and we talked about it later.  Apparently, Stanford has a group of volunteers that bring their dogs to help patients heal.  Well, she asked about it and requested a visit.  We were told they would stop by sometime today.  Angie was really excited and was rather anxious all day while we waited.

Max, the Labradoodle, came to visit us this afternoon at about 4.  A team of about 4 very kind women came in and chatted with us for a bit.  Max is fairly new at his job and is still in training with his owner.  He was very kind and did very well.  He is 7 years old and has been doing visits for about 6 months.  They are a service called PAWS, which is an acronym for Patient Assisted Wellness @ Stanford.  They even gave us a little card with Max’s picture and information on the back.

I knew it would cheer up Angie, but I was actually surprised by how much it lifted her spirits.  There is really something very special about animals and their healing influence.

Today was a lot better than yesterday.  I’m sorry I didn’t post until now, I’m running very low on sick leave, so I had to spend more time working than I have previously.  Between attending Angie and trying to keep up with things in Livermore, my day was pretty full.  That and no procedures to give me some time to post.  Anyway, enough about me…

Pain was in control all day and her vitals have looked great all day.  Her O2 saturation levels have been in the 90s most of the day (94 as of right now), which is fabulous.  Of course, she’s on 6 L of oxygen, so we’re not back to normal yet.  But, the bottom line is that her breathing is good and she’s feeling well.  She even muscled through a wall all the way down the hallway.  (That was right after a dose of morphine, so she was extra brave.)

This afternoon, they wanted to turn on the suction for her chest tube again, as per doctor’s orders.  Last time she got up to -10 mmH2O, but it was causing extreme discomfort and severe pain, so they turned it off.  They wanted to give her some pain meds and ease it up to -20 mmH2O, which is where she is now.  We’ve got a plan to keep her medicated through the night with the scheduling of the different things she can have, so I think we’re set.

This afternoon a medical student training to be a doctor came and asked Angie a bunch of questions.  It is part of a program where they have students come and talk to patients to see if they ask the right questions to try and diagnose the problem they came into the hospital for.  They asked us to pretend it was Monday and answer questions as if he were the doctor we saw a few days ago.  After that, he asked for a complete medical history.  I’m not sure he knew what he was asking for!  We proceeded to recount, with as few back-tracks as possible, a chronological list of all of the surgeries and procedures over her lifetime and especially in the last 6-8 years.  He seemed genuinely interested (he even admitted he’d like to become a heart surgeon, I think) and had very good bedside manor.  I’m sure he’ll be a great doctor.  One funny thing did happen: while he was doing his examination, he wanted to check Angie’s eyes.  He didn’t have a flashlight on him, so he pulled out his phone to use the camera flash as a flashlight and then sheepishly looked up at the man who was observing his interview and asked, “This probably isn’t appropriate, is it?”  “No, it isn’t appropriate at all.”  Whoops.  He went on to say, “Some older patients think you are taking their picture because they don’t realize you can use it as just a flashlight.”  Yeah, I can see why that’d be bad.  Poor guy; besides that, he did a fantastic job.

Jon came by a few hours ago to drop off a couple things and to chat for a minute.  As we were explaining the current state of things he asked, “So, what does it feel like to have the fluid sucked out of you?”  Angie retorted, “Draining, literally.”  We all cracked a wry smile at her humor.  It was good to see Jon and visit for a bit.

Tomorrow we’ve got a CT scan planned to look at Angie’s liver to make sure it is still functioning properly.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Well, I think that just about covers events for the day.  Sorry for the wait.  I hope you find it was worth it 🙂