Sleeping Beauty...

David texted me the usual early morning update from the hospital.   

"Alan has had a fairly settled night and the Consultant has been round.  He has organised a CT scan to check Alan's stomach but doesn't think it will show anything untoward.  It's a case of ruling things out rather than ruling them in."

Ed and I arrived at the hospital just before 11am.  The anaesthetist came shortly afterwards and administered some midazolam to knock Alan out so he would lie still enough for the scan and off he went.  He was back in no time and a Junior Doctor spoke to us a short while later to confirm that it was all clear, no post surgical problems or issues with his feeding peg.  That's a relief.

They will continue to treat the chest infection (the Junior Doc did mention pneumonia but before we could question her further, the poor man in the bed opposite crashed and all hell broke loose.  My heavens, these nurses and docs are impressive in a crisis.  Thankfully the man survived but it was quite distressing to be in the vicinity.   Don't know how they deal with these situations day in day out, especially when they don't have a happy outcome.  These nurses still have to go and do their supermarket shopping and pick the kids up from school.  They are truly amazing.
Sorry, I digress...)  so yes, pneumonia was mentioned so we will ask them to confirm tomorrow if that's what they think he has.

It was difficult to gauge if he felt a a bit brighter today as he was so sleepy from the drugs but his heart rate, BP, oxygen level and temperature are all normal so he's definitely better than he was. 

He will get milk tomorrow if he wants it and we can see if the sickness returns.  They've changed one of his antibiotics so hopefully that will help.  The nurse (the very hard working, lovely Jenny) took a swab from around his feeding tube as the skin was a bit weepy so he may need some antibiotic cream for that.  Other than that things appear to be plodding slowly in the right direction.

I have a dilemma re. this coming Saturday night.  In December I booked a table for us and a group of friends at our favourite local restaurant to celebrate David's 50th birthday but had to cancel at the last minute as Alan was in hospital.   Last week, before all this latest drama, I made another group booking at the same restaurant for this Saturday to celebrate my birthday but now Alan's back in hospital and I don't know if he'll be home by then.

I don't want to cancel the booking too soon just incase he gets home later in the week but at the same time, I want to give the restaurant enough warning so they don't lose any business.   How long do you think I can reasonably leave it before cancelling?   Maybe I should ring them tomorrow and explain and ask them when they would prefer to know by?   I feel really bad about it as we had to cancel a group booking in the same restaurant last January because of the snow!   They're going to refuse to take any bookings from us at all shortly if I'm not careful!  :-(