Looking Up

Mark is still up at OHSU, but he making strides toward being able to come home. When I went up there yesterday, he said that he felt pretty good. Of course, he usually fell right back to sleep after saying that, but at least he wasn't in pain. When the nurse came in, he said that he wanted to go home, but she and I both thought that he should take a little walk, see how he could manage out of bed. The stroll itself went fine, but shortly after he got back, his heart starting acting up again and the squeezing pain in his head started up again (although thankfully not in his heart). They ran a quick EKG and notice some "differences." The doc on call said, "Nope. You're not going home." So ... there he stays.

They gave him a drip of calcium something-or-other before I arrived yesterday, and they changed his blood pressure medication from verapamil to metoprolol. That seems to be helping a lot. They still don't know if they are going to need to do a phlebotomy to thin his blood out further or if this-all will be enough. Hopefully we'll find out today.

The kids are holding up reasonably well. Kate is doing her usual avoidant routine. She seems to take great pains to be "normal" during these times. I know she worries about him--but I don't think anyone else would know that from watching her. She functions at these times by pretending that nothing is wrong. The only thing she has asked me was whether he was home (upstairs) or in the hospital. I have told her in the past, though, that I will never hide something truly serious from her, that if I know he is going to die, I will tell her. As morbid as that may seem to those of you with "normal" lives, I really think knowing that she can count on that gives her a kind of freedom to go about her life and not worry about every bump in the road.

Alex is doing remarkably well. He has pitched two royal fits (one with me, one with my dad), but otherwise, he seems far more calm than he usually does when Mark has one of his longer spells in the hospital. He is not pacing up and down, flapping his hands and talking a mile a minute. He did ask several times if Dad was going to be okay. He didn't seem satisfied with my simple "yes," so at bedtime we sat down and had a chat. "But this seems serious," he said. I told him that yes, it is serious, but not for right now. It's serious because if they don't fix it, the pain will just go on and on and the lack of oxygen will damage his heart, which would cause worse problems down the road. I told him about the ICU, that most people who go into the ICU come out alive, that going there is not a sign that The End has come. However, I said, NOT being in the ICU is a pretty good sign that he's going to be okay. I think that was a "marker" he could understand.

Now Brendan ... well, what can I say about Brendan? He's just his regular self, wound a little tighter. He had a couple of crises yesterday. He wanted the TV, for one, and I gave it to Kaitlyn. Then, in the evening, when Alex was serving up a couple of bowls of CheezIts for snack, he dropped a few into a bowl with orange peels and then put them back in the box. Egad! He contaminated them! Brendan was jumping up and down by my chair, distraught and sobbing. But other than these "breakthrough" moments, he seems to be holding up pretty well.

And me? Well, I'm okay now. This really threw me for a loop. He was in the hospital Tuesday for the exact same set of symptoms, and we were told that he was fine. And then ... blam! It was like driving through an intersection and getting T-boned by a car that ran a stop sign. For two full days, I felt like I was spinning through that intersection, trying to get a grip on the wheel and find the brake! I had let my guard down, which I should know by now NOT TO DO!! But ... one has a hard time living always in a state of alert. I think it's natural, when things go relatively smoothly for a while, to want to relax. But I was so caught off guard, that I was in a seriously befuddled state for awhile. I mean, I went about my business, driving, taking care of kids, etc. But my emotions were a wreck. I had to go into this sort of deep freeze to avoid having them spill out all over the place. When I finally came out of it, Becca commented that I could talk again. Yep, that's how "frozen" I was. I couldn't seem to find the right words! When I'd talk to people, the words would just stick in the muck of my mind and it was SUCH a struggle to pry them lose. But that has passed now, and I feel normal again. (Hey, I heard that! Yes, I know that's a relative terms, for one such as myself! You don't need to rub it in.)

Well, I've started my poetry class with Sandy Soli, and I am loving it! I have my first week's packet due by noon tomorrow so I think I'll sign off and go smooth out some loose edges and get that ready to send on over. More soon!