Tuesday March 6, 2007 8:50 PM

I paged Jim's doctor, Dr. Tannas, this morning. According to him, Jim's doing much better. His bloodwork is slowly improving, and they removed all of the staples from his face today. Jim tells him he FEELS lousy, but the doctor said it's probably the four antibiotics he's on that's doing that, plus they can make you a little crazy. This was the first day Jim woke up without a high fever...it was just a low grade one, so if he continues improving they may try to do a little swallowing therapy on him. But it's at least another week on these antibiotics. I asked the doctor about his gameplan. The plan is to 1) get rid of the pneumonia, obviously and then 2) have him fully functioning and able to eat on his own before he's released. This is going to take awhile. I told the doctor, just take as long as you need to get it done. We'll cope somehow.

So I had a shrink appointment this morning, the details of which I'll get to later, and I stopped and saw Jim afterwards. He was in a lot of pain because of the staple removal, so they pumped him up with some morphine, but by the late afternoon when I went back he was pain free. He's starting to get a little nutty, though. I asked the nurse about if it could be from morphine withdrawl, because he's acting like one of those junkies you see on the street corner. She said it's a combination of that, the meds he's on, and a phenomenon she sees quite often that she calls "hospitalitis": When you're just in the hospital so long you start to lose perspective on where you are. Like the other day when he was asking me about being plugged into the computer....he kept talking about "When are we going upstairs?" and I'm telling him, you ARE upstairs. You're on the top floor...you can't get any higher than that. "But I was in the basement yesterday." No, you were NOT in the basement yesterday. You've been in this room for several days now. Then I'm asking him questions about work and other things to make sure he hasn't totally lost his mind. Of course, he had to bust my chops and say, "What do I do for a living again?" Oh, I almost choked him for that. "Stop scaring me!" I told him. He has a phone in his room but can barely talk because of the feeding tube still in his nose so there's no point anyone calling him. You might not understand him anyway. But he must be getting better becauuse he's flailing around. He asks me to cover him up, then he kicks off the covers, then he rolls over, then he plays with the t.v., then he turns it off, then he plays with the covers again. He wouldn't have that much energy if he wasn't getting better. I'm going to ask the nurses tomorrow if maybe he's healthy enough to go for a little ride in the wheelchair just so he can get out of those four walls a little bit.

Now on to me. So it turns out I really AM nuts. Well, this does not surprise me one bit. The official diagnosis is bipolar, or manic-depressive...same thing. This is not the first time a doctor's told me that. The doctor, Dr. Hunt, said it was a good thing Dr. Frank did not give me any anti-depressants the other day because they can make bipolar people suicidal. The best medicine is lithium, but that can be toxic to the kidneys and I already have lupus which can damage the kidneys, so she picked her second favorite drug, which is actually a seizure medication, but works well for bipolar people. It will take about a week to fully kick in. In the meantime I'll stay away from sharp objects. She was actually talking about possibly admitting me, but I told her no way....I've got too much work to do. I promised to page her if I wig out. Then Thursday I see the caridiologist. Friday the shrink again. To try and find somthing good out of all this, at least I finally got off my butt and got treated for this thing. It was the trauma of all of this that finally pushed me over the edge. Otherwise I would have gone another forty years and wound up trying to treat this AND alzheimers. Wouldn't THAT have been a mess. I find it very amusing, though. I really AM crazy...that just cracks me up. I'm riding down the road yelling at the cars...."Get out of my way...I'm CRAZY!!!"

I also spoke with the principal at Jimmy's school today to see if maybe they can get him some counseling. The principal said he'd have lunch with him and see how he's doing, then hook him up with their psychiatrist just to see how he's coping.