Jan 5, 2009 - More tests and going home

My level of frustration and aggravation was going up. When I went to the bathroom, I had to unplug the control unit on the IV, untangle all the tubes and cords and roll the IV stand along with me. It was a real challenge to pee with all of this mess tagging along.

The speech therapist showed up and did a pretty thorough evaluation. She wanted me to do all kinds of movement with my tongue against a tongue depressor. Then she had me repeat all kinds of funny phrases. I cannot remember any of them but "Peter Piper picked..." was not one of them. Hallelujah, she declared I could eat without choking! This meant they could remove my IV, which was my sole source of liquids and nutrition up to now.

Monday morning is a busy time as the full shift comes on duty. It seemed like it was hard to get anyone's attention to remove my IV. So I just waited in bed.

Matt Soper and James Ford, minister and elder from our church, stopped by to visit me. It was really good to see them. As they were leaving, Matt prayed for me. Then Anne asked them to stop by and see my roommate, a 28 year old man who was having complications with diabetes. I heard Matt talking to him and offering to pray for him. He responded "Please do, I LOVE prayer." This hit me that we had been in the same room with this guy for two days and did not know. I will remember to be more bold in the future.

Dr. Chiu had taken on my case as the neurologist in charge. I saw him over the weekend and he was very nice guy who seemed like he knew what he was doing. One of his associates came by to see me today. I asked him about getting back to cycling. His response was "exercise is good for you. Yes, you can do cycling when you feel like it." Anne blurted in "Wait a minute, you do not know my husband. He's crazy! He rides 50 miles and fast on a bicycle." The doctor responded "Oh, no I did not mean you could do that. You need to take it easy". I think I smiled on the outside, but inside I felt crushed. I did not want to live the rest of my life feeling like a semi-invalid. He did have some good news for me. He said they would release me to go home today. This sounded great.

The nurses came in and told me I was scheduled to get some more tests. I protested and said I had done all the tests the night before. They insisted the doctor had ordered the testing. So I was still hooked to my IV, had not eaten and had to do some tests.

We had brought my PC to the hospital and I had managed to get it connected to the patient network and read email. I wrote a little. Between the IV tubes, the bed and my malfunctioning right hand, it was a no-go. I think I finally set it aside. It had become very apparent that this hemorrhage had really affected my right hand. I could not control the touchpad well. My pinky and ring finger did not have any fine movement control.

Well the testing turned out to be real. They wanted to run some kind of ultrasound tests to examine my carotid arteries. The tech that ran the tests talked to me a lot about what he was doing. He also told me I was very lucky to have Dr. Chiu. He said he was very well read and one of the top stroke doctors in the country. I also learned that Dr. Chiu was the director of the stroke center at the hospital. This was all very reassuring. The tech told me that both my arteries were in great shape and there were no problems there.

After returning to my room, I decided to make some noise. I went by the nurse station and asked them when I was going to get the IV disconnected. One of the nurses got up and said she would take care of it. She followed me back to my room and took it out. Hooray! I'm free!

I figured out the hospital food system. They had this marvelous new concept - order food when you want it and they deliver in 30 minutes. Well, it actually took almost an hour, but I finally got some real food. I was only allowed the low salt menu. Bleah! But it was food. It had virtually no taste. I realized much later that most of the lack of taste was because the hemorrhage had wiped my ability to taste on the right side of my mouth and I could not sense temperatures either.

It was now about 4 in the afternoon and I was ready to get out. We signed all the papers and got my care instructions. I was now supposed to wait for someone to come get me with a wheelchair. Anne went down to get the car. I finally called her and told her I was busting out. She was all for it. I sneaked down the hallway and took the staff elevator to the floor where Anne was waiting. It was wonderful to slide into the seat of a civilian vehicle. I called the nurses station and told them not to bother with transportation - "Bob has left the building."