Hello on Thursday

Dear Friends,

My caregiving ended at 4:30 PM on Wednesday. Linda put on her coat and said : "Take me to the emergency room!" Her body was telling her that something was radically wrong, and we later found out that she was absolutely correct. When we arrived at the emergency room, the place was packed. Unless you were bleeding, you were told that there would be a very long wait. Well, we just happened to have known one the triage people, and she put us in the express lane. We did get in to see physician assistants, nurses, X-Ray, Ultrasound personnel, but the surgeon on duty never dealt with Linda until 10:30 PM because the emergency room was busy all night long. As soon as he saw Linda's incision, he knew why she was maintaining a 101.2 temperature. He had to cut some of the dissolvable stitches and drain the wound. He used suction devices which were like mini turkey basters. Since I am kind of squeamish, I did not look at what the surgeon was doing. Linda did writhe with pain every time that the surgeon squeezed, and pushed on the incision area.
While all this treatment was taking place, I did text family members, and couple of close friends of Linda's status. Judie Culver had been spending the day with her daughter who is going to school in Boston. When she received my text message, she went directly from the Mass Turnpike to the hospital. She arrived a little after 11 PM. She missed the draining and bandaging of the wound. Judie did notice that I was extremely tired. Judie said that she was wide awake, and that she would go with Linda to the room which she was assigned to.
I arrived home at midnight. I am guessing that Judie didn't leave until after 12:30 AM.

The surgeon said that the antibiotics which Linda was taking would have had no healing ability since there are no capillaries or blood vessels in the affected area. No healing could have possibly taken place until the pus was drained from the wound.

Linda ended up in a 3rd floor room which has four or five beds. In this room, all the patients will be monitored all day and all night long before either being discharged, or before being sent to a semi private room.
I am pretty certain that she will be discharged at some point today. The surgeon said that Linda might have to have a home health aide come to the house to monitor the wound area, and change bandages. Linda knows that I wouldn't do well with this aspect of caregiving.

At one point during the evening, a nurse came in and asked Linda a whole series of questions because she had no history of health issues at Berkshire Medical Center. Linda's needed hospital services only three times: The birth of our two sons, and a cyst removal at a hospital which closed several years ago. Me on the other hand have had many encounters at Berkshire Medical Center. I am definitely in their data base, and will be part of it for the rest of my life.

Weather -- You wouldn't think that there is global warming if you go outside in the Berkshires today. We might not reach 20 degrees today, but a warming trend follows this chilly day. The day light hours are increasing by a couple of minutes each day. Spring is in the air!

Former President Clinton wowed the audience at a college campus speaking engagement in the Albany area. The local news channels interviewed people as they exited the lecture, and they responded by saying that his speech was inspirational. If President Clinton didn't have some of those sexual aberrations while he was in office, he would have been classified as a great President (at least in the mind of we liberals).

Sports -- I was all set to go into my man cave and watch the Celtics last evening. I missed the game because of the emergency room visit, but they did win the game.
Serena Williams was lucky that doctors caught that Pulmonary Embolism before it killed her. Her life threatening illness reinforces my position that "life is a crap shoot". Enjoy every moment that you are on this earth.

Well, you know what I will be doing today.
Talk to you soon. The Curley Lad