Still here…

Today is Day 10 of Craig’s hospital stay…and nothing has changed.

Last night he was moved to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit so that he could be monitored more carefully.  He is still running fevers that have spiked as high as 103.4 degrees F.  He is still unable to take deep breaths or move much because of the pain in his lungs.  He administers his own pain meds with a special button he calls “his buddy.”  He rests pretty much all day, and is only alert for a handful of minutes each day.  Gary, Leah and I try to make him laugh or smile when we can.  Otherwise, Craig tells me he just wants to go home.

There are calm periods of time when all Gary and I can hear are the bubbling of Craig’s oxygen through its water filter and the clicking of the pumps that push his antibiotics.

Other times feel hectic when nurses are trying to make him comfortable while technicians wait to use their testing equipment and swarms of doctors surround the bed.  They poke and listen and ask rounds of questions that Craig tries his best to answer clearly.

Although there are no definite answers to what’s going on here, doctors do think that Craig’s blood counts will rise over the next few days and that should help his body work out some problems.  They are also concerned with his nutrition, since he hasn’t been eating more than a couple spoonfuls of cereal a day.  Craig’s nurse Ann has conducted some taste tests with nutritional drinks and it looks like Vanilla Carnation Instant Breakfast is the winner for now!  Yuummmmm (kind of).

I hope to have better news to report in the next few days.

Love you all,

Kat