Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Dodged a bullet

Frank was doing great when he first came back home from Alta Bates (Saturday, July 17). Linda and Mikee were much more comfortable with all the procedures and equipment after all the training at the hospital. He met with his visiting nurse, Jeannie, on Sunday, who was impressed with all of Frank’s stories. It turns out her brother-in-law had played slide guitar in Frank’s All-Star band in SF and her brother and sister are regular viewers of Frank’s cable TV show.

Wednesday, July 21, Frank had back-to-back sessions with a speech therapist for swallow therapy and with a physical therapist, (both of whom were great!) which all went well, but later that evening Frank started running a fever and the amount of secretions that we were suctioning had escalated and were getting thicker.

By Thursday morning it was obvious that Frank had an infection an then began a crazy daylong ride to avoid another trip to the Emergency Room. The nurses we called tried to contact Frank’s doctors and unfortunately they were all out of town on vacation. After many calls to nurses and various doctors it appeared our only choices were to go to the E.R. or to wait to get a call from a doctor who would probably tell us to go to the E.R. It was clear that all Frank probably needed was an antibiotic and it seemed crazy to run to the E.R. for every little thing. As the day wore on, Frank suggested we call Dr. Corey, who is Dr. Kerbavaz’s associate who we had only met once before at the hospital. That proved to be the perfect move. When we called she was actually available to talk to us and when we told her that we were facing another trip to the E.R. she said, “Oh, no, no, no!” and promptly called in a prescription for an antibiotic. Within less than 12 hours, Frank’s fever gone and the flow of secretions started to diminish.

Since then, Frank has been doing great. He is spending all of the day in his recliner. He also has been getting into his wheelchair once a day to cruise the house and supervise his Netflix Queue management on his computer.



Kittee, our 20.5 year-old Siamese cat, has been totally involved in Frank’s care. When we get up and start running around to do some procedure with Frank he climbs out of his bed and parks himself in the middle of the action. He even woke Linda up one night by tapping on her and because Mikee had been asleep for too long on his night shift watch.




Frank is physically getting stronger fast.

Keep those healing thoughts and good vibes coming!

To those who have donated money we deeply, deeply, deeply appreciate it. You will be hearing from us individually. We are squeaking by in July because of your donations.