I don't even know what day of the week it is

I discovered last night to my horror that apparently I started my new pack of Yasmin on Saturday. I am such a dumbass.

Sleep deprivation is a bad, bad thing. I don't know how my sister managed to pull so many nights at the hospital and still be coherent and cheer, because two nights of it and by yesterday afternoon I was a snarling wreck. I came home to Mom and Dad's and took a 45- minute nap yesterday morning but I'm having trouble turning my brain off for longer than that so as soon as I woke up, I showered and went back to the hospital. By 7:30 last night, I called my sister and we conferred that it is going to be necessary to hire private nursing care to do the night duty at the hospital - and to transition Dad home. So I put on my Boss Hat, called my mom, and as nicely as possible in my Wolfman state told her that we need to find a private nurse because my sister and I are just dying from exhaustion. Believe it or not, she actually agreed.

My parents are very proud and independent people. Neither of them will ever admit that they need help...maybe it's the years of living away from friends and family when Dad was in the military, or maybe it's the constitution you get from being from a large family (Mom is one of nine, Dad is one of eight). But this can create problems now, because as we've learned from this whole experience and Dad's blood thinner fiasco, someone really needs to be with them sometimes to manage things. They're not going to like it, but after this my sister and I both know that we're going to have to be a lot more aggressive about getting involved in things.

Last night around 8:30 I had settled in with The Cider House Rules (my second attempt to read it) and lo and behold my mother showed up at the hospital. She literally booted my ass out of there to come home and get some rest, so I came home to their house, poured myself a big glass of milk and had a few Benedryl, and collapsed into a coma. I'm still pretty groggy but at least I got a good solid eight hours of sleep.

We did find out yesterday that Dad has pneumonia in his lower right lobe of his lungs. They started breathing treatments with new medication and he was sleeping on his side so he could breathe better. It was almost painful to watch him wheezing away while he watched the news last night. Yet another reason that he really can't be left at night, and also because I kept track yesterday of how many times the nurses checked on him and it was one time in almost 5 hours. Pathetic. I had to raise total hell yesterday to get his breathing treatment done because the respiratory people were short-staffed and hadn't shown up for hours and hours. This is such a nightmare.

On the good side, he did get that nasal gastric tube out yesterday that had been pumping blood and crap out of his stomach, and he lost two IV's as well. Blood pressure is better and they are doing medication orally which gives them a lot more options for controlling it. A new issue is his blood sugar, which is running high due to the liquid nutrition they're pumping in - but insulin is helping control that. Geez.

I'm hoping that today he'll be feeling a little better as far as the pneumonia is concerned, and that we can find a nursing service to help out. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh, and on a brighter note, it's Monday and that means that the Starbucks in the hospital lobby will be back in operation. Although it's rather pathetic that it will be the highlight of my day as far as I can see it. Maybe Alexia the nurse will be back today to tell me about her herd of 20 goats.