Jim got his bronchoscopy this morning at about 9 a.m. They apparently pulled a lot of gargage out of him. They've also sent it off the be biopsied to see exactly what kind of bacteria it is so they can come up with the best treatment plan. There's three pulmonary guys at this hospital that work together. The one that did the procedure has an Italian last name...I can't remember it so I'll just call him Guy with the Italian Last Name. Then they also sent ENT down to give Jim another swallowing assessment. Well, I could guess how that was going to come out...he still aspirates his food. But he hasn't started his therapy yet, so that doesn't surprise me.
I called Lahey Clinic this morning and spoke to Bill Nye the Science Guy and told him that Jim wound up having a bronchoscopy today. He said that sounded like a good idea. Well, if it sounded like such a good idea why didn't they do that before he left Lahey? Whatever. It's water under the bridge now and at least it's done...and we're back in NJ for it.
I had another concern today also. I sent Jim to the emergency room with all his meds that he was prescribed to take when he left Lahey. One of them was an anti-fungal medicine that he still has several days left to finish. This is to prevent further fungal infection in his neck, and he really needs to finish that course of treatment. Pnemonia can be cured anywhere. The fungal infection could lead to another blown out artery and that could mean death or stroke, so that's far more important. I tried to communicate this with Jim's nurse today, but you could hear the wind between her ears. Ever talk to someone and you KNOW they were shorted a few buckets of brain neurons at birth so there's really no point? Well, that's her. So I told Jim to just take his anti-fungal meds. If they queston you about it, just play stupid like you were drugged out on your happy juice from the procedure this morning and didn't know what you were doing. Tonight I paged Dr. Italian and told him about these meds. He agreed with me and said Jim could keep taking them. He'd write an order allowing him to take his own. I also talked to Dr. Italian about something else...I know they need to treat Jim for this pnemonia, but if he doesn't start his therapy soon he's only going to keep aspirating his own spit and wind up with pnemonia again, so we have a type of "chicken or the egg" kind of thing going on here. Jim's scheduled for his first therapy appointment tomorrow. I asked the doctor if there was any way Jim could just go home on new antibiotics so I wouldn't have to reschedule therapy. Dr. Italian needs to find out the organism first beore he can come up with a treatment...so that makes sense...but he also understands the need for Jim to start that therapy as soon as possible. In the meantime I called the therapy place and told them what was going on and that I might not know if Jim can keep the appointment or not until the morning. We'll see what happens.
I brought Jimmy to see him tonight. He does look better...he doesn't have that "death warmed over" look that he had before. He certainly is not the picture of HEALTH by any means, but he just seems a little more normal looking. I'm hoping that culture comes back tomorrow and he gets out. If not, it will probably be Friday. I just hope he doesn't have to wait another two weeks to get into therapy if I do have to cancel.
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