In 34 hours - 4 p.m. tomorrow, I'll be meeting with the insurance, lawyer and risk management people for the hospital to discuss settlement. I'm loaded for bear, as they say.
Meanwhile, Linda is slowly improving. Chuck and Donna Fitzpatrick were here yesterday for quite a while, and the four of them were joking and giggling about things they remember from times even before I knew Linda or them. It was so wonderful to see her smiling. She is still struggling through the chills and fevers caused by her wound infection, but her kidneys are slowly improving, and the area of redness over the incision site on her right side is slowly getting smaller. The surgeons had taken a black sharpie marker on Thursday and drawn a line around the huge red area, and you can in fact see the redness shrinking away from the marker line little by little as each nursing shift passes. This is a good sign.
The blood and intrapleural fluid cultures still haven't grown out any organisms that can be identified as MRSA, or not, which is not terribly unusual since the powerful IV antibiotics were started so soon after signs of her infection occurred. With Tylenol in the Norco they are giving her for pain and fever, her temperature is coming down towards normal, but she is still experiencing alternating sweating and shivering every 90 minutes or so, and her diarrhea has not gotten much better in spite of a dose of Imodium after every bowel movement. The thing that angers Linda most is her inability to get up and go into the bathroom to eliminate, or even to have enough warning to get on a bedpan before her bowels move. She has repeatedly tried to creep out of the hospital bed at the foot of the bed where there's about 18 inches of space between the foot board and the ends of the side rails. If it weren't so undignified it could be a W. C. Fields comedy sketch.
When her temperature shoots above 101 degrees she complains that all she wants is a peaceful death, but then when the drugs bring the fever back under control she regains her will to fight this thing, get well and go home. I am alternately delighted and sobbing throughout the days and nights because I can't do anything to help her but be a watchful presence at her bedside, holding her hand and trying to comfort her through the roughest patches. The only thing besides Chuck, Donna and Tom's visit which kept me sane this weekend was the work I needed to do getting my binder ready for tomorrow's settlement conference. And, at 1:30 this morning I went up to my hotel to get a business suit, white shirt, tie and tasseled loafers to wear to the meeting tomorrow. I wouldn't want to disappoint the audience by failing to dress the part of the trial lawyer.
I have a lot of lawyer things to do today for Linda and other clients, and most of the day tomorrow will be devoted to final preparations for this meeting at 4 p.m. So unless there are significant developments regarding Linda's condition in one direction or the other, you guys may not hear from me until late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Your friendhip, guidance, love and prayers have been Linda's source of strength throughout this ordeal, and my motivation to be strong for her each and every hour of every day, no matter the obstacles placed in our path. Thank you one and all. I only hope we can have something positive and miraculous to report about Linda, sooner rather than later, and we will have appropriate weather for a backyard celebration of her homecoming, if not her complete recovery, before autumn 2010 is over. If I can get her back home with the medical and therapeutic support and resources to keep working on a full recovery while enjoying the comforts of home, it will be a blessing from the universe to all of us. There's still plenty of bubbly in the cellar for the purpose. [Yes, Curtys, this means you!]
Tonight Linda and I have been reminiscing about our hot air balloon ride over the southern California wine country, and we gabbed with Chuck, Donna and Tom about our travels with them by car to Rome, Florence, Gubbio and the rest of Tuscany back in the American Airlines days of jet setting for $135 each first class to Europe. God do I miss that!
Well, the four inch fire engine red heavy duty ring binder is on my knees, and the adrenaline [or is it epinephrine?] is starting to flow. God help the unprepared!
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