discharged!

I was very surprised to find out that my brother is getting discharged tonight.  It turns out now his doctors think that he's not septic.  All the heart issues, shortness of breath and fever they think was due to dehydration because he threw up so much and so violently. 

I have had a fairly good experience with the doctors, who seem to have the time to talk to you. Some of the nurses are another story however.  Even tonight, when they called me, a woman who hardly spoke English started talking about voiding (he needed to pee before they would let him go) and I had to ask her to repeat herself three times before I could understand what she was saying.

I did have to ask them to test his blood pressure upon standing up because it drops a lot and then he faints.  His blood pressure did drop, from 139 to 104, but they seemed to think it was ok.  I took his blood pressure very regularly when he was living in assisted living, and most of the time he was in the nineties, so I think he will be ok.

I have a hard time understanding why I have to point out that they need to do such tests before release.

The only good thing to come out of this is because he has lost a lot of strength by being immobilized, that he now has gotten physical therapy ordered for him.  This is a person who should have daily physical therapy for the rest of his life.  I wish the nursing home had a program where they forced people to do real exercise.

I had canceled out condo reservation for our Miami trip because I assumed that we wouldn't be able to go.  Now I am trying to resurrect it, knowing that at any moment there could be a serious relapse, but we figure that we just can't live life like that.