The days after

Later Thursday afternoon after I wrote my optimistically sunny blog, we met with Dr. Bennett, who explained that Russ’ artery was 90% blocked. That was sobering and we were doubly glad it was stented as soon as it was. Then after the doctor left, we found that the incision at the femoral artery was oozing blood, which was not supposed to happen. Russ handled it better than I did. Usually the sight of blood doesn’t affect me much (unless it’s my own), but I had to step out of the room before I fainted. That was a weird sensation. Erma, the young, attractive and incredibly knowledgable nurse had to press on his groin for twenty minutes. So, things could have been worse. ;-)

They got infinitely better. After that incident, we were not sure if he would be discharged yesterday. He was, but needs to take it really really easy.

We are settling into a somewhat laidback routine here which is the complete opposite of our “normal” lives. We usually sleep in until at least 8:00, have breakfast and talk about the day. Depending on how he slept, Russ may go back to bed. We try to go out every day, for a short walk or trip to the grocery store. There is an extensive tv and movie library here, one that even supercedes our friend Rick’s collection. So far, we’ve watched The Interpreter, The Devil Wears Prada, a couple episodes of Mythbusters, School of Rock, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, and half of Lord of the Rings (don’t think we will make it through the trilogy though) We have a queue of a few dozen more films to watch, but also read, cook, and compose emails offline.

Russ talked to his brother Fred, sister Sue, his parents and mine today. Absolutely made his (and my) day.

If things continue to go well, we plan to see the doctor a week from Monday and hope to fly home within two weeks. Given that the heart attack happened only two and half weeks ago, that seems like a really long time down the road still. But we will try to make the most of our time here.

The more time we spend here, the more it looks and smells like California in January. The air is clear, although there is also a haze on the horizon. The rooftops are mostly tiled, the lawns manicured, and it is quite green (it does rain more than SoCal). There are uncountable mega and strip malls. The weather is one for a long sleeve shirt with shorts.