For those of you who have been reading this since the beginning, especially after the transplant, you'll perhaps remember the posts about Evil Bill and the effects of high doses of steroids. Well, Evil Bill made an appearance again yesterday and it was only me gathering up my things and walking to the door to leave that finally got through to him.

Because he is a fall risk, they keep him tethered to his chair and his bed is alarmed. He has know this from the beginning of his stay. He's know he's not supposed to walk alone or get up unattended. Yesterday, he decided to rebel and he was ugly with everyone. Nothing anyone said got past his idea that he was able to get up until I walked to the door. 

Part of it is that he is feeling much better. And another part is that the chairs are very uncomfortable. He said he's tired of sitting in that hard chair and wants to sit on the couch and I told him it's just as hard (because I had sat in the chair also). He says if he asks for help to the bathroom they stand in there and watch him (they do not).

When he finally calmed down some I put a towel across his lap and opened his tray table and got his electric razor and he finally shaved. He had to use the sideburn trimmer for all of it, but he shaved and did a pretty good job! He hadn't shaved since August 5th for my birthday.

He is doing much better and Dr. Threlkeld, the infectious disease dr. is leaving it up to the pulmonary doctors as to when he can be released. He still sounds a little crackly and he's still on the humidified oxygen at a higher rate than normal and staying winded when he walks, so he's still not "well". Of course, he will never be completely well, but he's not as well as he can be. But Dr. Threlkeld said that each day he can pump antibiotics in is another day they are killing the germ and one less day we have to do it at home. We may be coming home with them, it just depends.

I didn't see the pulmonary dr. yesterday. The weather was going to get bad and I wanted to beat it home if possible. I had to leave pretty early to beat the after school traffic (there's a high school directly across from the hospital), or I would have to stay until my normal time of waiting until most of the regular rush hour traffic was gone and then would be driving through rain. I hit rain just before town and it rained so hard I couldn't see. It had rained here at home and then it made noise for a while and rained gently for a bit but nothing hard. It's supposed to start again this morning so I'll be in it this time, I imagine.

We should find out today if Bill will get to come home by the week-end. I know he wants to. He told me last night that they did untether him and let him sit on the couch and that he used his walker that he's coming home with, but I don't know if he just said he used it to make me happy or if he really did use it. I guess I'll find out when I get there. 

So that's it. Hopefully we don't spend another day in steroid land. Of course Bill doesn't realize what he's doing. To him everything is reasonable and makes perfect sense, so we'll see. Wish me luck!