After One More Night, Many More

So. Her O2 went down to 89 last night on 4 liters of Oxygen, around midnight. And yes after Terry gave me a nap yesterday afternoon, I did sleep here again; good thing too. I was able to help last night and today. The nurses, while excellent, are also sometimes annoying and forgetful. I can shield her from some of that.

We just heard from kind and compassionate Doctor Petersen (Cardiologist), speaking for Doctor Charlie Lee the Pulmonologist, that they found what could be cancer cells in the fluid they took out of her Friday. Which would mean lung cancer.

The pleural effusion is back, which is why she can't breathe again; it is around her right lung once more, the xray said yesterday. and it is once again huge.

They are going to move her to the Swedish First Hill campus today, off Madison, which is the Pulmonology ward, as we have been on the Cardiac ward for a week now. So far, with a few glitches, her heart is fine. Over to you, Doctor Lee.

They say it could be another week before Mom gets home. She is very upset by this of course. She said "I miss my cat!"

And then some.

She has fallen asleep now with her hand over her forehead. My heart breaks looking at her.

I am very far beyond rested sleep, but not quite hallucinating yet. Last night I slept from 12:30am to 5am when they woke us, then a little bit between the 6 and 7 am wakeups. In that last little nap I had what I hoped was not a prescient dream. Turns out it may have been.

I dreamed that Mom and Dad and I were on "P.S." (the boat that Dad built in 1970), sitting in the water off of Indian Point, at anchor near another boat.

I was on the boat's back deck, and suddenly it was weirdly awash, with water to my knees, though there was none inside the boat itself. I called forward to Dad in the Pilot House, and told him. He said he could handle it, and he leaned the boat to the side as easily as if it were a light sailboat, to spill the water out. But more water came in through the gunwales, and it sunk a bit deeper. I reached inside the boat to get Mom's ring just in case (her engagement ring that they tried to give me last Wednesday when she was admitted, but it was so big it fell off my thumb and I put it back on her). Dad tried to lean the boat the other way to spill the water, and it took on even more. Now all but the main house was sunk. Mom and Dad and I began to swim. In one last attempt I tried to stand it on end, by pushing on its back, but alas that sent it to the bottom. It was only about 20 feet of water, I could see it down on the bottom. I called for my folks, but could not see them. I tread water, frantic. Then Dad came swimming up trailing about 6 scavenged net floats on lines held in his mouth, to tie to the Crow's Nest and mark the place.

Mom was nowhere to be found. And the other people in their boat just watched and did nothing.