It's 7:30 AM, and I wake up at the Travellodge confused, but comfortable. I get dressed, make coffee in the tiny coffee pot, and open the windows onto the downtown street. At 8AM, I called Enterprise Rent-A-Car to come pick me up and take me to their offices to rent a car (a promise they had made during a phone call the night before). At 9AM, they called back and said they couldn't do it -- they didn't have a car -- spring break, wrong location, any excuse -- WHATEVER.
So I got out a phone book and called Dollar Rent-A-Car. OK, so they get some kind of award. By 9:15, they had picked me up, and by 9:30, the car was rented and I was given perfect instructions on how to drive back to the hospital. Along the way, the driver told me that the cherry trees were blossoming this week, and they only blossomed for about a week. The streets were lined with them.
I had not noticed until he mentioned it. And once I noticed, the town seemed overwhelmingly full of them. The picture above is a tree that stood outside the Liver Lodge.
By 10, I was in Gary's room. He had already seen several doctors, and was very positive. I guess he thought about things. That's the only way he could be. He was polite with everyone, but there were more tests to take today -- a lot more -- and they denied him breakfast. At 11AM, I went downstairs and brought up a bagel and cream cheese, which I ate on the sly so he wouldn't have to watch -- but he still saw it and told me to eat somewhere else next time. I don't know if he ever got to those chicken breasts, but they were gone from the drawer of his nightstand.
They took him back to radiology for something. I went down there and waited until they took him back to his room. He knew I had rented a car and he was happy about it -- and he didn't want me waiting around in his room for them to take him to more tests. I told him if they'd let him out for a bit we could go for a drive and maybe see the coastline this far up north. He said it was nothing to look at. I went downstairs at 1PM and ate a hotdog. Really bad idea. I checked in on him, and he told to put miles on that car if I was being charged by the day, I wandered around the hospital and took some pictures. I read the newspaper. I didn't want to leave.
Later in the afternoon, one of the Cardiologists and a team of residents came by to listen to his heart. It was Dr. McMurty - not his usual cardiologist. I think they wanted to all hear his heart as a learning experience. He was in good spirits about it, and let them all put stethescopes on him and hear him tick. Dr. McMurty though looked like she had just been up for way to long. She would talk about how well his heart was working to her "class" and then they'd listen -- she told him to take deep breaths, then normal breaths, and all 5 or 6 of them had their stethscopes to his back. At one point, she said "can you stop breathing now?" He said "that's what I'm in the hospital to avoid." All the students laughed. She just had this blank stare on her face for a moment ant then said, "you know what I mean." It was funny. Guess you had to be there.
At 3PM, they came back to his room to take another sonogram. Said they'd lost the one from yesterday. I waited in his room.
There was a rainbow that you could see from one end to the other from his window.
Finally, he got to come back and eat. His nurse was basically useless. She ate lunch for an hour after he asked for a pain pill. He had also asked repeatedly for his Spirolactine - that he understood worked with his other medicine, but no one would order it for some reason. I got in the nurse's face when I found her in that breakroom eating. She kept saying he was asking for a shot. She was nuts. But everyone was saying that Gary said things he didn't (like he wanted a shot). I was there -- they said he said crazy things because he wouldn't take his Lactulose. I saw him drink that stuff. Finally, they brought him a pain pill and some food. Blood pressure 110/67. He wanted to sleep and for me not to watch him. He also wanted some Prep-H. I studied the maps I brought and found a near-by Walgreen's, where I went and got 2 out of 3 of my prescriptions filled.
I also had no Internet connection. This sounds minor, but keeping track of everything in one place is so important to me that I'm entering all this stuff now and re-living it. Don't know if it's healthy for me or not, but I feel like I need to do it. If I would have been able to be on the net, I would have somehow felt better and less alone.
Somewhere, I heard you could hook your cell phone to your notebook for a connection. Since there was no phone line at the Lodge, this sounded like a way to get back online. I mean, that's why I bought this groovy notebook anyway. I found a Radio Shack and bought a cable from them. But they said I needed the software. So I had to drive to another Radio Shack to get that. I also got a small Grundig shortwave radio on sale that both Joe and Gary would love. I needed to listen to NPR to sleep right. By 7:30, I was back at the Liver Lodge with Taco Bell and all of what I thought were the necessary components to get online. I managed to avoid everyone there and get in through the back door. I figured that if they disliked me for my aloofness and my cell phone, they'd really hate it that I had rented a car.
I had no luck with the connection. Somehow, the software wasn't working and you know what? I didn't really care. Spent time on the phone with everyone after chowing my tacos, and then I crashed alone in that wonderful Lodge bunk.
I wanted to just pack up and leave that night. Move out of there -- what was I doing there anyway? I needed to get a hotel, or something -- but it got late, so I stayed and decided I'd figure things out in the morning.