Dad Moves to a New Room

Sometime last night Dad was moved out of the telemetry department on the 3rd floor and down to the 2nd floor; now he can have his coffee & iced tea again. As luck would have it he was moved to Bruce's room! But this time Bruce is not as agitated as he was the 1st time; he had a stroke that is affecting his behavior as well as his ability to stand. His sister stopped by on her way to work, she said he is being medicated to keep him calmer. Bruce is in Bed A which is the window bed, so this is Dad's new view.


I had breakfast at Sunrise Cafe at their breakfast bar. You can take as much or as little as you want; they charge by weight at the register. The offerings today were white rice, brown rice, fried rice, vegetarian fried rice, scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs with bacon & vegetables, stir fried vegetables, Portuguese sausage, Spam, bacon, & turkey bacon.


By the way, that's a reused disposable cup from the cafeteria. I had bought that one the last time we were here and was going to recycle it at home. In the meanwhile Suzanne sent me a vacuum insulated stainless steel bottle that said it kept cold drinks cold up to 24 hours and hot drinks hot up to 12 hours. Yesterday when I used it I found it really does stay hot, too hot for me to drink easily; so today I brought a regular cup to pour some hot tea in so it can cool down to drinkable temperature, while the remainder stays piping hot.

Curtis' father-in-law Mr. Nomura is also in the hospital; he is 3 rooms down the hall from Dad. I went to visit him when I first got here since Dad was asleep; Mr. N. was also asleep. Then when Dad needed his diaper changed, I went to visit Mr. N. I fed him part of his breakfast and he said he needed to pee also! I guess they're on the same schedule.

Dr. Schwab came by. Good News! Dad's white blood cell count went down to 17,000 per mcL, he was about 25,000 when he came in to the ER. Though it has come down significantly, it still needs to be lower; the upper level for normal is 10,500. Dr. Schwab said something grew in one of the blood cultures so they are trying to grow more to get a confirmed identification on it. Dr. Perera also came by. They are still waiting for the MRI results, but they assume there is an infection & are treating for it. She said they will continue with the Daptomycin and watch to see whether Dad has a reaction to it. They also want the white blood cell count to continue to go down, hopefully, back to normal levels.

Yesterday I wrote about the motion-activated door opener switch for the bathroom. The toilet flush is also motion-activated but the water at the sink and the soap dispenser are not. The paper towel dispenser is not motion-activated but you pull on the edge of the towel you will be using to dispense it. Although you have to touch both the soap dispenser & the faucet handle, the germy-link is the faucet handle since you have to touch it a 2nd time after you have washed your hands with soap and rinsed them off.

Curtis showed up around 1:30 p.m., I left about 2:10. I almost immediately ran in to a traffic jam. It took me about 40 minutes to go about 1 mile, which brought me to the Fort Shafter/King Street exit. I had decided to take the exit about 15 minutes earlier when I saw it as I was creeping along. In the meanwhile, while I was standing still, I checked the Hawaii News Now app to see what was slowing things down. It turns out a truck hit the Middle Street bridge about 2/3 mile ahead, dropping large chunks of concrete and other debris, and all the eastbound freeway lanes were closed; all traffic was being rerouted on to surface streets. I guess I'm lucky I got on the freeway so close to where the truck hit the bridge; the initial total standstill was probably caused by the police stopping everyone else while they had the cars stuck between the debris on the freeway and the King Street exit backing up to get off the freeway. Then they let us go.

The view, immediately after getting on Moanalua Freeway.

Heading for King Street.

Everyone starts heading for the exit.

Unmarked police cars redirecting traffic.

I took me nearly 2 hours to get to Maunalani to pick up the Purple seat cushion. Well, I didn't need to rush to get there. They had not found the cushion yet. They will try again tomorrow. In the meanwhile, the other cushion I ordered arrived today. It is the Royal Purple cushion, its 2" thick; I sure hope this helps keep Dad's butt from hurting so much.

Happy Birthday to Ern Dog, Kektadose, & Leigh!