Surprises

Not all surprises are good ones. In fact, these days, few are. But not all are bad either.

Take my dad's foot, where he got a burn back around Thanksgiving. We were waiting and watching to see if/when it opened up, something that would need immediate and watchful treatment. Last week the outer layers sluffed off, leaving a patch of pink skin behind. Surprise! So many of his systems are shutting down, but he can still heal his foot?

A surprise to him, once I pointed it out in one of our mostly lucid conversations, is that his nerve-damaged foot has not been feeling cold for a while now. That used to be the hardest thing to try to treat, and in fact is what led to his getting the burn on the other foot (at the hospital). Since we got him those super-thick fleece sweatpants, it hasn't been cold. I had been theorizing that keeping his legs warm would result in keeping the foot warm, since he'd be supplying warmer blood to it. Surprise! It seems to have worked.

Randy got a surprise yesterday on her visit. Even with his oxygen concentrator kicked up to 4+, as it has been since Thanksgiving, his blood O2 levels can still drop precipitously. She finally got to see him when he was non-lucid. (He usually gets more alert for her visits.) Checking his levels, the blood O2 was down to 71. She'd already announced that his lungs were clear, something that - surprise in itself - should have been a good sign. Apparently there's just less working surface there, regardless of how they sound.

She gave us a surprise yesterday. She instructed us to quit adding the Thick-It to his liquids. He hates it and therefore has been drinking less. As a result, he's been getting dehydrated on occasion. Given a choice between aspirating a little liquid and dehydration, the aspiration is the lesser of the two evils. So this morning, soon as I finish posting this, he'll be getting his coffee just the way he likes it. That ought to please him. He's been complaining about it for weeks.