Al's Blog-o-Sphere

I can’t believe it’s been 6 days already. It seems like 2 or 3.

I just visited Al. I went straight to his room on arrival at the hospital today, about 9:00am-ish. He was trying to sleep, but talked to me for a bit. He would have been wakened soon anyway, because someone from the transplant department came in to review the medications he will be taking.

She separated each drug into two pill cups. One for those he will probably be taking the rest of his life and the other for those he will eventually stop taking. They were an impressive pile of pills, but Al has been taking so many pills all his life, he wasn’t flustered a bit. He knew what almost all of them were.

He didn’t know one of them. Protonix. But I knew that one. It’s a proton pump inhibitor and I took it for some time for GERD. It’s hard to stump Al, so I enjoyed that little victory.

He complained about a sore back and said he had been kept awake all night because of muscle spasms. They told him that was pretty normal at this point, but he wanted to sleep some more, so I left him to sleep as long as he could. Continue Reading…

I never got around to posting yesterday. I was here in the morning, but decided to wait until later to write anything so I’d have the latest info. But by the time I visited in the evening I didn’t have my laptop with me. I’ll get to why later.

So, I’m double posting here, covering both yesterday and today. That’s all right, because there isn’t really any big news, just steady, incremental improvement. Continue Reading…

I’ve been staying at a place called Neville Family House. It’s one of four locations run by the Family House organization here at UPMC.

I didn’t know much about it, having stayed at a hotel the last time I was here in 2000. But after being up all night, by Friday I didn’t care if it was a cot in a closet.

It’s been really nice. It’s sort of like a hotel, but you do a lot for yourself, just as if it were your home. It sort of is, while you’re there. You make your own beds, clean up after yourself, are responsible for your own food and cooking and laundry. Yep, just like home. Continue Reading…

Al continues to improve slowly. He’s still wired to a bunch of IV’s and drain tubes, but that’s to be expected. He’s not out of the woods yet, but there’s been no sign of the Wicked Witch or any Flying Monkeys.

I visited him late this morning and found him sitting up in a chair and eating applesauce and apple juice. Finally, food, such as it is. I know he was hungry even going into surgery. But that’s no time to eat!

While I was there, he was getting some of his meds and a nurse was doing his checks. Everything still looks good, but Al was tired and I left after a while to let him rest. Continue Reading…