Postsurgery, days 8 and 9

TL;DR: Another wild couple of days, but back on the recovery train. Toot toot!

Full story:

When last we met, Vic was sleeping soundly and all was right with the world. (Well, right considering everything he's been through.)

Imagine my surprise—and dismay—when at 6:30 a.m. Friday I was rudely awakened by virtually every medical professional on the floor rushing into Vic's room. I gave him his white board, and he wrote "shook." "Shook?" one of the doctors said. "Are you shaken? Are you cold?" But I'm fluent in Vic, and I said, "His defibrillator went off." (It shocked him. That's pretty close to "shook.")

This made everyone even more panicky—everyone but us. We had more of a "been there, done that" attitude. I mean, his heart goes into ventricular tachycardia, his defibrillator goes off, and life goes on. The device did its job.

But since that's not their everyday life, I'm glad I was in the room, because I was able to answer all their questions about how often the defibrillator goes off, what kind of defibrillator it was, what his heart conditions are, what medications he takes for them, etc. Slowly but surely, they decided it was OK to leave him. I mean, they all had to go to their surgeries and whatnot. A couple of cardiologists came down, they did a bunch of heart tests (interrogating his device, giving him an echocardiogram, giving him another chest x-ray, doing an EKG), and I answered the same questions again. Later in the day, after talking to Vic's regular heart doctor, they decided to start him on a new heart drug.

While medically, the shock didn't have much of an effect (other than definitely delaying the discharge date), psychologically, it threw him into a tailspin. He basically spent the whole day in bed when he wasn't walking or going to the bathroom. I'm sure he wasn't feeling great from the pneumonia, but he also gets pretty melancholy when his defibrillator goes off.

So all in all, it was a pretty subdued day. He did get all four walks in, but the last one was so slow, and he was so weak. It made me so sad to see him so down in the dumps.

So imagine my surprise—and delight—when at 5:30 a.m. Saturday I was awakened when I saw the CNA taking him to the bathroom—and he was walking regularly. Not only that, but he walked from the bathroom to the bed without assistance as if he hadn't had pneumonia or surgery or a shock at all! It was early, so we went back to sleep, but at 6:30, when the ENT team was here, he just seemed better. More jokey. More ... Vic. He even did a little jig on a walk he took later in the day!

I don't know whether he was just feeling that much better from the pneumonia (I mean, if you're going to get pneumonia, do it in the hospital where they can give you massive amounts of powerful antibiotics so you can get over it quickly) or whether he just decided to put on his big girl panties and deal, but it really was like night and day.

I would have liked to hang out with him as he had this wonderful day, but it was my home day—check the house, make sure it didn't burn down, stuff like that. And guess what I found when I went to look at the garden?

A cucumber. A whole one!!! We planted 70 gazillion seeds, so getting a whole cucumber out of it is pretty darn special. (Note: I did see a whole bunch more little ones, so it looks like I'm going to be eating a lot of cucumbers in the coming weeks.)

Anyway, I got back to the hospital in the afternoon, and Vic and I had a very nice evening together. We even snuggled on the couch after his last walk of the day.

Next steps: Get that last drain out of his neck (he got the first one out this morning), finish up his antibiotics, and spend three days on the new heart drug. That puts us at 7 p.m. Monday, so a Tuesday discharge date—while not necessarily likely—is not out of the question.

You know, if he doesn't get attacked by an aardvark first.