Hello all.
William is in hospital. Talk about events conspiring against me!
1. The Nursing Home has my mobile no. as I always have that with me. So, because they have that number, I keep the mobile by the bed at night. I don't turn it off, but it goes to "sleep".
2. I keep facebook notifications switched off, so they don't bleep all the time. So FB messages only get through (usually) if I have actually activated the phone.
3. Last night, something went wrong with either the phone or my FB settings, and the "switching off" of FB wouldn't work - and one of my FB acquaintances started messaging me in the middle of the night about something! So having been polite, I then switched off the phone - which, as I said, I never normally do!
4. Wouldn't you know it!! When I switched it on this morning, first thing, it started to ring almost straight away - it was the nursing home! They had had to send William to the hospital as he had been very badly congested in his chest when they were getting him up this morning. - I had actually told a member of staff that he had seemed to choke a bit on something yesterday, and was coughing a lot. (They are supposed to phone me before sending him to hospital for something like a suspected chest infection, so I can make the decision - but of course - they couldn't get me, could they?!)
I left for the hospital, and got stuck in morning rush hour traffic, and half way there the phone rang again - the hospital, wondering if I was on the way. "Yes! I'm stuck in rush hour traffic! I'm coming!"
Got there, to find William had been extremely ill and had needed resuscitation! "A bit of resuscitation" is the way it was put, whatever that means. I don't think he was actually dead - but I think without pretty big intervention, he would have just slipped away.
So - he has aspiration pneumonia with an underlying infection, but has had iv antibiotics all day basically. The poor love is stuck full of canulas, a catheter, had a bi-papp on most of the day which was finally changed for an oxygen tube - which he won't leave in. And he keeps pulling at the canulas, so they have been bandaged in. Just hope he forgets about the catheter! He made a few grabs for it while I was there - I'm not long home.
The doctor there spoke to me first thing I got there this morning about my thinking on DNR. I told him I had already spoken to them in the nursing home about it, and that I would not have wanted this for him now - and I know, from the way he always felt about hospitals and doctors & medical treatments, that he wouldn't either. I would so much rather he was just kept comfortable as possible in his familiar surroundings and let nature and his old age take their course than have him been traumatised - even unintentionally - the way he has been today. The doctor said that in all honesty, given the condition William is in, they would not be inclined to do much more intervention - the aim is to stabilise him and discharge him back to the nursing home as quickly as possible.
Yesterday, he was walking around the nursing home as he usually does. However, he has not
quite been in his usual relaxed form the last day or two either - but nor could I say he has been ill in any way. Bloody age and illness.