Chuck was not able to get a standby flight to Indianapolis today, so he didn’t get to see Linda at all this week. He did talk to Debbie a little bit, and this is what I have been able to learn:
Linda has been able to get out of her bed a few times and go for short walks up and down the hospital halls. However, most of the time her pleural effusions – the fluid that builds up on her lungs – are still large enough that she has to have mechanical assistance for breathing, and as has been true in past weeks, she is on and off the ventilator. Of course, she can only go walking in the halls when she is off the vent.
Chuck and I talked about a procedure called pleurodesis, where talc, or some drug, is injected into the space between the pleura – the membranes lining the chest cavity and covering the lungs – causing scar tissue to form and stick the membranes together, so there is no place for the fluid to build up and collapse Linda’s lungs. It’s a common procedure in cancer patients who have the same sort of fluid buildup Linda is having. Chuck talked to Debbie about pleurodesis for Linda. I had suggested to Dr. Tector that this be done two months ago. Our friend the respiratory therapist tells me that Dr. Tector had a spat some time ago with one of the pulmonologists, and won’t let them work on his unit any more. Debbie tells Chuck that now, the lung doctors think Linda is too weak to have the procedure, so once again Dr. Tector’s obstinacy and pigheadedness have caused delays which deprived Linda of a chance to control the pleural effusions and get better so she can come home.
Chuck is suggesting transferring Linda to a transplant center in Chicago, but none of the centers here will take her now because of how badly Tector has messed up her condition – they don’t want to be responsible for the effects of his many mistakes in her case. And of course, Dr. Tector would have to sign a discharge order for her to be transferred anywhere or Blue Cross/Blue Shield won’t pay her bills after she leaves Indianapolis. In a very real sense, then Linda is his prisoner until he decides to let her go or she dies in his hospital. It’s most unfair to her, but there is nothing more we can do except pray for her and hope for the best. I would like the chance to talk with the lung doctors and find out if they think Linda will ever get well enough for a pleurodesis procedure, but of course not a soul there will even speak to me, including Debbie. Linda must feel completely alone and abandoned down there, because they won’t even let me talk to her or write to her.
In case Debbie is still showing her these e-mails, I will include that the house and yard are in good shape, and ready for Linda to come home. I got rid of the tree service and the landscapers, and bought a lawn mower. I cut the grass twice a week, and it is green and growing now that we have had a good deal of rain this weekend, and I have trimmed the crab apple trees and the shrubbery back for fall. Everything looks neat and tidy. I have been doing all the chores Linda used to do, including the laundry and the daily trip to her post office box to get the mail, and the marketing a couple times every week. I’m trying to use up the canned goods in the pantry and the meat and vegetables in the freezer before I buy anything fresh except milk, eggs and bread. There is enough pasta sauce, pasta and canned soup to keep me going for another couple months before any major grocery shopping will be needed. I try to be inventive about what I cook for myself, both because it is a fun, and because it passes the time and gives me a little break from the terrible loneliness of living in our beautiful home without Linda here.
When I don’t get any news about Linda for a week at a time I have a lot of trouble sleeping, wondering if she may have taken a turn for the worse, whether she is hurting with nobody there to comfort her, and whether in fact Debbie or anyone at that awful hospital would even call me if she were dying. I suspect they will not. I haven’t heard from our friend the respiratory therapist at all this week, and I note that another respiratory therapist at I U Hospital who was a neighbor on my Facebook Farmville farm, who never ever took care of Linda or ever talked to either one of us, has taken herself off as my Farmville neighbor. Apparently I U Hospital is still actively on the warpath against anyone who might be a conduit to me of even the smallest tidbit of information about Linda or how she is doing. I just don’t understand how they can be so cruel.
Our friends Mark and Marcia were kind and generous enough to invite me to go stay at their house in Albuquerque for a while, but I am afraid to go that far away because if something bad does happen to Linda I am sure the hospital would not call me soon enough for me to get back from there to comfort her before she died. I’m not even sure they will call me at all until after she is either transferred or dies, and I doubt Debbie would tell me anything about such an event either until it was too late. Not knowing from day to day is tearing me up inside.
I don’t have anything else to report now.
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