Backslides

Grandpa's in the hospital again. He's been getting wheezier for the past week, showing signs of discomfort (without being able to articulate it), and had some extremity swelling that got the family and the group home nurses concerned. Most of Sunday was spent in the ER trying to track down the problem. We suspect a reaction to one of his newer drugs - the switch and the onset of symptoms seem remarkably coincidental - but we don't know as yet just what the official diagnosis is.

I have a day off on Wednesday - one of those "get HR off my back for over-accrual of vacation hours" vacations - but until I know what's going on with Grandpa I'm hesitant to make any real plans. (I was considering a run to a local zoo... one of them has a few new exhibits I'd like to see, and the other has a special dinosaur display that sounded cool. Heck, even the hole-in-the-wall on the hill nearby has a new tiger exhibit that I'd kinda like to look at.) I suppose this is part of the reason I finally broke down and bought myself a cell phone this weekend, though... still doesn't feel quite right.

In the meantime, I've been on a bit of a nostalgia trip; I found Almost Live! clips up at a local news site. (Almost Live! was a long-running local comedy show, though a fair amount of the regional humor probably doesn't hold up with newcomers; Ballard, for instance, is no longer a haven for Nordic fishermen and old drivers, having been yuppified significantly. Not that there aren't a few holdouts in the area...) I remember most of these from the original airdates, and danged if I don't still chuckle.

I guess I've been backsliding, too, in a way...

MONDAY UPDATE: We visited Grandpa in the hospital after stopping by his house to mow his lawn and check his mail. (Trying to make sure neighbors know the place is being watched...) He wasn't as bad as he evidently was on Sunday, but he wasn't as good as he's been, either. The heck of is is that nobody in this so-called integrated hospital system will talk to each other. The hype about interconnected patient files and cooperative care is pure malarkey. Nobody will even consider the possibility of a drug reaction, even though he has every symptom on the list and they have nothing really to lose by taking him off the thing and seeing. My uncle's ready to strangle someone to make them listen; they kept Grandpa in an unheated room for hours, refusing to fix the thermostat and ignoring requests for a blanket. (The room he's in now felt too warm to us; I'd hate to think they're that petty at a hospital, but I don't know anymore...) It's enough to make one almost glad that one can't afford health insurance; there's almost no chance I'll live long enough without it for this kind of runaround to dictate my life or death.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Well, they finally sent Grandpa "home." ("Home" being the group home where he's been staying, not his house.) Little definitive answer on what went wrong, why he'd stopped eating and could barely answer questions, and so forth, but he did have some manner of infection and an edge of pneumonia. He wasn't eating much there, but he ate everything they set before him when he got out of the hospital. So we're hopeful he's back on an evenish keel.