Friday, August 6, 2010 — Skip really back to reading.

It's a joy to walk into the room and see Skip avidly reading his Kindle or the newspaper. He looks much more rested today after being given a sleeping pill about 10:00 last night. He has a roommate who came in by helicopter last evening from Lakeport. He buys and sells restaurants and golf courses. Fun to see Skip taking interest in another man's life and stories. It's like getting one step closer to the good old Skip.

Last night after venting my fears to myself and the world, I began organizing the concerns that I have and planning questions for the doctors regarding, appetite, fibrillation, fatigue and other related subjects. I was actually able to rephrase and answer some of my questions in a way that calmed my spirits. I'll have ample opportunity to present them to the doctors before we leave and we'll also have a very competent doctor who will be receiving Skip as a patient and he will have all his charts. So I'm actually in a much better place today than I was yesterday. And though he was receiving dialysis today and is always tired after that, he is much more rested than he was all day yesterday. Oh, how you learn to savor those small incremental steps forward.

The patient ate all his breakfast today before I arrived! Hard to believe after seeing his distasteful look when viewing food the last few days. Everything tastes like metal. Dr. Warner, the disease doctor says it will only be a few more days that he'll have to take certain medicines to protect him from the C.diff returning. That's a relief. Back to the breakfast. It evidently consisted of one large plate of fresh fruit. The OT had heard him say yesterday that he liked fruit so she really did it up for him. Good going, Kelly. As I said, he ate it all and told the nurse that he wished he could have that for every meal. Well, I guess that wasn't quite possible, but he had a very appetizing smaller plate of canned peaches and pears with cottage cheese for lunch. It was accompanied by a small, crisp green salad that Skip actually partook of enthusiastically. A fruit smoothie completed the picture. I can't say enough about how hard the entire staff at this hospital tries to make things work for their patients.

Skip can now pretty comfortably sling his legs over the side of the bed and sit there to wait for the lift team to help him to a comode. That's progress amigos! We'll just keep trying to concentrate on the good stuff and see where we go with it. The coast is calling to both of us.