Teamwork continued...

We arrived home mid afternoon from our very long excursion to the hospital for a simple procedure.  I think the GI Lab was happy to see us leave as we had been there for so long occupying a room I think they wanted to use.  The ride home was not without excitement.  Tim coughed most of the way home and his right leg kept having spasms every five minutes.  I've seen his arm do this when he gets fatigued, but never his leg.  By the time we got in the door at home, we were so pooped.  (Ha ha ha ...no pun intended again!)  Tim said he was tired and a little chilly.  He sat down in his chair and pulled a blanket up over himself.  We were both hungry, but I think we were just more tired than anything.  So I made us both a mini bagel with cream cheese and then we agreed a nap was in order.  A good hour and a half had passed and I got up to do a few things around the house.  Tim was still asleep.  Suddenly I heard his voice call out to me, saying he thought he had a fever.  Now I couldn't imagine why he thought that, but I popped a thermometer in his mouth.  By golly, he did have a fever!  It was 102.5.  The switch in my mind flipped on and I thought, he should not be running a temperature after a procedure.  So I dialed the doctor's office.  I really wasn't sure which doctor to call, so I called his PCP first.  They told me to call the doctor who did the procedure, which I then did.  He told me to get Tim to the ER immediately.  Now, I am not one to get ruffled very quickly, so I responded that I just gave Tim a couple of Tylenol and did he think I should wait to see if his temp goes down.  The doctor, in an authoritative voice, told me to get him to the ER now and if I couldn't drive him there, he would call an ambulance.  So off we went, back to the hospital that we had just left two and a half hours previously.  

As we arrived, there is no longer parking in the ER.  You can pull up and drop off someone and then park in the lot down behind the ER.  My husband, of course, would not let me drop him off.  He wanted me to park and then push him in his wheel chair back up to the ER.  Up being the key word.  You see the parking lot is down hill from the entrance to the ER.  So by parking in the lot first, I then had to push him up to the entrance.  By the time I got him in the door, the nurse asked me if I was the one who needed to be seen!  I told her I just needed to catch my breath, which in a moment I did!  They actually were waiting for him and immediately took him into a room to be seen.  All the ER standard procedures took place.  They took blood, a chest x-ray, a cat scan and hooked him up to a monitor.  His pulse by this time was 127 and his blood pressure was 96/49. His fever was coming down (thanks Tylenol), but they were concerned with his vitals.  

This sounds like this was all lickety-split, but it really was done over a course of several hours.  They had now hooked him up to fluids and IV antibiotics.  He had an infection, but they were not sure where yet and were waiting for test results to come back in.  By this time it was getting so late, I was hoping they would just admit him as I wasn't relishing taking him back out to the car in the middle of the night and bringing him home.  Finally they made the decision to keep him.  They were going to send him up to a monitored floor, since his vitals were still off.  Since he was off his coumadin, several thoughts of what was going on with him passed through the doctors minds.  But the official diagnosis was aspiration pneumonia.  He had quickly turned into one very sick little cookie.  Evidently when he was having trouble breathing on the table during his procedure when they had to intubate him, he aspirated.  Bacteria then flowed directly into his lungs which didn't take long to spread like wild fire.  Thankfully, it wasn't a pulmonary embolism or a punctured colon like they originally thought.  Tim has had pneumonia so many times in his life, we figured this was just another notch in his belt buckle!  

While in the ER, he finished off two bags of antibiotics.  When he was moved up to his room, the IV antibiotics continued.  It was now way past midnight and he continued to get admitted.  The nurse's came in, followed by the residents, followed by more nurses who were trying to get him settled in.  He was so tired by this time and I was exhausted too.  He just wanted to go to sleep.  I decided to say good night to him and go home.  He was comfortable and I knew he would be well taken care of.

As tired as I was, I was also very very hungry.  Now where do you go for food at 1:30 am?  Why McDonald's of course!  It was probably the strangest thing I've done in a long time, going through the drive through in the middle of the night.  However, the staff was extraordinarily talkative.  I learned that the lady taking my money had just moved here from Atlanta and was not enjoying our chilly weather!  I think I was delirious at this time and just smiled and took my food and left.

Finally the end of one hell of a day.  Tim stayed in the hospital for a couple of nights and was discharged home to my care once again.  He had to restart his coumadin which was now a bit out of line, but we could manage this.  He needed to take oral antibiotics for a week and make several trips to his doctor's office.  But today he is home and making a good recovery.  He's tired, still has a bit of a cough, but he's good.  Oh and that polyp they removed during his procedure (which now seems eons ago, although it was just last week) was benign.  So a good end to a colonoscopy gone wild!  

And above anything else, we are still one hell of a team!