So I go to see Jim twice today...once in the early afternoon and once at night. I always like to go to make sure he doesn't get another nurse like Little Miss Sunshine. Now he's picked up a staph infection so you have to wear a gown and gloves to go into his room. The nurse said it's not so much for preventing me giving HIM germs but to protect me from his staph infection so I don't go spreading it around the hospital. Apparently they test all of the nurses for it once a year and every year about 6 percent of them come up positive and have to be treated. He tested positive in his nasal swab but they don't know if it's in his blood yet because those cultures won't come back for a few days, but they're treating him with the heavy duty stuff now anyway. This made me nervous because you hear all kinds of crap on the news about these virulent staph infections killing people all the time, but the infectious disease specialist came in while I was there and said not to worry...it's only the elderly and people with compromised immune systems that they worry about with this...like people on chemo or people with lupus taking prednisone (lucky my lupus is not active right now and I'm not on that stuff) or people with HIV infections. But Jim says he feels really good and his neck feels normal for the first time since he's been in the hospital. He was awake and alert and watching t.v. both times...not in a lot of pain...on less morphine than he was after surgery number 2. He's just still coughing up a lot of crap, so tonight they were sending in the respiratory therapist to give hima nebulizer treatment. But they say it's good he's coughing up the crap because that means his body is getting rid of it on it's own. His white blood cell count is coming down and all of his other blood work looks good. There was definitely something going on with those three teeth they pulled because last night after they pulled them he spiked a fever of almost 103, but after one dose of Tylenol it broke. The infectious disease specialist agreed with me about how his rotten teeth could have caused 1) his infection in his throat and 2) his pnemonia, so at least I'm not an idiot, but he said it's better to leave the rest alone until he clears his other infections because they'll only releae more bacteria into his bloodstream right now. I asked Jim if he wanted me to push the issue and he said no. So I'll do what he wants and leave it alone. But if that biopsy of the material in his neck comes back positive for the bacteria in his mouth I'm going to gloat, gloat, gloat. My Mom suggested I tell them, "OK- who wants to apologize to me first?"
But Jim is joking around so I'm staying positive. They took the breathing tube out today and now he's just got the oxygen mask on, but the sucker is so loud we can't hear each other. Every time he wants to say something I have to stand up and get close to him to hear. Plus it doesn't help I'm half deaf anyway.
Tawanda left today. Apparently she's going to visit someone she knows who just had a kidney transplant. Geez...she must be sick of hospitals. Last night we were joking that if Jim keeps having problems in his neck maybe we should just put another head on him like in the movie "The Thing With Two Heads." She never heard of that movie. It's about a racist white guy who has his head stuck on a black man's body (Rosey Grier). I've got to find a way to put the movie poster on this blog. It's such a BAD, BAD movie. But it was made in 1972 so what can you expect.
And to everyone who's been e-mailing me...thank you. It's very encouraging and does really help me get through this. Keep it up. I love hearing from you.
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