Friday Night - More Great Folks!

In the previous post, we showed Mindy, the respiratory therapist who spent a long time with Carroll, listening to his stories about training pigeons. That's something he's been doing since he was about 12 years old. He had pigeons in a race last November in Jacksonville and has some entered in a race this coming November. In that race the pigeons will fly from near Nashville, TN, to the Spartanburg, SC, area.



The next friendly Summerville Medical Center employee we met was Julie. I can't remember exactly what she was doing in this picture, but I believe this is just after one of the contraptions he's hooked up quit working. It was telemetry monitor, I think. Julie had it working in no time.



Carrie was his evening nurse Friday evening/Saturday morning. Carrie is one more member of a great staff. She checked in on him several times and seems to be very patient. That's good!

George is another respiratory therapist. While The Dawg was taking another breathing treatment (smoking his "peace pipe"), we learned that George likes hunting and fishing.

Friday night, The Dawg watched the Georgia-South Carolina baseball game on TV, the live feed of the Atlanta-Arizona baseball game on the Blackberry and he worked today's crossword puzzle.

He's still coughing and there's still some wheezing. It will take more than these two days in the hospital to clear up the pneumonia and to find out if that is the only problem in his lungs. He's still getting three kinds of antibiotics and other medications.

There's only one time I've questioned his behavior. Yesterday when I looked up from paperwork, he was watching TV. He was watching one of those home shopping networks; they were selling nothing but bras! Somehow, I don't think he was in the market to buy one!

In the Hospital

The Dawg’s open heart surgery - scheduled for Tuesday, May 19th - has been postponed.
That’s because he’s in the hospital with lung problems.

After an initial x-ray, his doctor thought the spots on his lungs might be cancer. Now, after a follow-up MRI, it seems that he may have pneumonia instead. His doctor asked him to come into his office this morning and decided to put him in the hospital immediately.
The lung specialist saw him this afternoon at the hospital.

Pneumonia is what they’re treating him for right now anyway – with intravenous antibiotics. Actually, he’s on three kinds of antibiotics. There also may be some fluid in his lungs because of his defective heart valve.

One of the doctors said Carroll most likely will be in the hospital about 5 to 7 days. Any infection of any sort must be completely cleared up before he can have the surgery to replace his heart valve.

He's in pretty good spirits. That's because he just found a Georgia Bulldogs football game on TV. You're probably thinking it's not football season. You're right; it's not the right season. It's a game that's almost 13 years old!

As long as it's Georgia, the year of the game doesn't matter!