Friday evening, and Bob/Irv is happy to have left ICU for a wonderful single room with a decent view of the bay. He's also very happy to have finally eaten after starving since last night in preparation for a fourth try at having that stress test. He was finally taken for the test around 3. It was quite an outing: he was bundled into a wheelchair, hooked up to a portable heart monitor and oxygen and IV line, then propelled by his nurse (with an aide handling the IV stand and oxygen tank) to the elevator, where we waited in a traffic jam with patients riding in beds to get to the third floor nuclear medicine lab. I settled into the nearby waiting room, only to see the whole entourage wheel back into the hallway 5 minutes later. Turns out that after dialysis this morning and no meals all day, his blood pressure was too low for the test to be done safely. Arrggghhh.
Anyway, he got to ride back to the 10th floor to his new address, 1073 Long, where his slippers and robe awaited him, along with the best graham crackers and apple juice he's ever had!
Today's opinion on how long he will be in the hospital is this: his 1A status is just for a 2-week period at this point, based on approval from UNOS, and he will remain in the hospital for this. If the transplant doesn't happen in that time period, the team will re-evaluate and maybe request an extension of this status. It will also depend on his condition......if he does have chest pains again, he's in the right place. So far it's only happened at home, but we don't plan to be in a position of driving in from Livermore any more. But that's another post for another time!
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