pneumonia and another birthday party

It turns out I was right.  My brother does have pneumonia.  But it wasmuch easier to resolve at the new nursing home than at the old one.  Now that there is a nurse practitioner, I called her and asked her to listen to my brother's lungs.  She was a bit skeptical, because she said hoarseness could be caused by his medications because they dried him up.  But she did not that he seemed a bit out of breath just walking around and she ordered an xray and concluded he did have pneumonia.  I actually believe she will probably notice these things on her own once she gets to know him better.  I also asked her how much he weighed (147 lbs) and mentioned to her that in my opinion, anything over 150 lb. should be an action level, that some kind of intervention of congestive heart failure needed to be considered.   I also asked for weekly weighings and she agreed to order that.

Meanwhile, the nursing home sent me an invitation to a party for November birthdays and my brother actually invited me to come.  It was at a very inconvenient time, 2 pm, right smack in the middle of the day, and wasn't good because I have out of town guests staying with me.  If they had given me sufficient notice, I would have asked them to come in a different weekend.  But everything is always done at a nursing home at the convenience of the staff.

I was lucky.  My brother and one of my very good friends came with me.  As my husband put it, the party was surreal. There were about 10-12 big tables with mainly people in wheelchairs sitting at them.  There were also a couple of rows of chairs which my group took.  As we sat there for about an hour, the place filled in with people in the kind of wheel chairs that are more like beds.

They had an entertainer, a nice guy who sang 1940s songs and military numbers (because it was also Veterans Day.)  It was kind of interesting and uplifting to watch people there kind of sing along (no one really knew the words) and move their feet to the music.  My brother seemed to enjoy it, as did I, just as an unusual, interesting experience.  They read off everyone's name who had a birthday in November (all women, by the way) and skipped my brother so I yelled out something about forgetting him, and then he interrupted and told the audience that he didn't want to be recognized for this birthday.  This is very typical.  But it was OK.