Monday Morning

Ok, a new routine. Ricky and I are both going back to work this morning. Visitors to the ICU are disallowed twice a day between 7:30 and 9:00 AM and PM. I'm going to try to visit twice a day just before these hiatus periods. This morning I left the house at 6:15AM, had a good visit with Dad, and was back pulling into the garage at home at 7:35AM. It's about 15 miles round trip. I can do that each morning, no problem, without having it impact my availability at work. I'm working from home these days, connecting to my client using a laptop they gave me. I feel encouraged that this is all workable.

The drive down the freeway was a breeze at that time of the morning, but on my way back up the other side (the one I had come down on) was already becoming congested. So getting started early is definitely an advantage. I could tell all last week as Ricky and I drove up and down the 5 freeway that we were benefiting from residual light traffic from the holidays, but all that will be gone now and I need to take that into account. It would be very difficult right now to drive down to Fullerton -- that's about 30 or 35 miles away through the worst of L.A. traffic. So I'll go there on Saturdays, and stay up here during the week. Fortunately we were able to secure everything at his house before this, and Laura is keeping an eye on everything there.

I'm assigning people job titles -- here's what I've got so far:

Ricky: Keeper of the Keys
Diane: Tech Support (she got Dad's e-mail running)
Uncle Bob: Transportation Management (he's keeping tabs on the car and the plane via the Flabob crew)
Laura: Homeland Security
Me: Princess & Scrivener

When I got to the hospital, the nurse decided to dial back the sedation. They do this to test how he tolerates it. It wasn't more than a few minutes later that he started to respond. He didn't exactly wake up, but he started to move and grimace and his face got red. The blood pressure was still normal (121/65 for my medical readers). To my untrained eye, it looked like he was in pain, so I ran out and found the nurse. She said that it's just him trying to wake up, not a cause for concern, and a necessary step. So I tried to breathe through it -- it's horribly difficult to see someone you love apparently in pain. The agitation passed after 5-10 minutes, and I sat there for another 15 minutes or so and talked to him. I told him we're on this road now, and there's only one was to get off of it, and that's forward through these difficult steps. I pulled out my iPhone and called up the blog and read him several of the posts and comments. If you have anything to say to Dad, please put it in the comments -- I'll read everything to him each time I visit.

I want him to have some sense of normal life going on, so I updated him on the football play-off games. I'm not a football fan, but because my husband is an avid fan of the Patriots I usually know roughly what's going on. I told him about the Patriots-Giants game, and talked a little about this weekend's two wildcard games, though I could only remember the outcome of one. I told him about the rain storms, and about Laura's comments about his cats. I told him about my conversation yesterday with Jim Pyle, his friend from Flabob Airport.

Anyway, dear friends, please fill up the comments. It makes for perfect content for these one-way conversations I'm having with Dad.