(Saturday evening, March 17)
Ebony has pneumonia.
I stayed over last night and just sat with Ebony, holding her hand. They had given her some pretty heavy painkillers so she slept straight through. Even when the sun was coming up and light was slowly illuminating the courtyard outside of her window — and even when shift change was starting — she was sleeping peacefully. We could have flown her to Helsinki, with stops in Oslo and Stockholm, and she would not have woken up until we arrived and were greeted by glamorous, well-educated reindeer with slightly low self-esteem and a taste for rock n’roll.
I got to the hospital around 4:30, navigating my way through a sea of green and puke puddles — High Tide for the “Irish” on the UES — and grabbed a coffee from Au Bon Pain.
I ran into Ebony’s Mom in the hall and she told me news. Ebony has pneumonia and is being treated with some antibiotics I have never heard of and pretty heavy painkillers that are allowing her to sleep right through anything.
The day nurse — a nice guy named Taylor — gave her something to break up her congestion — Albuterol and Ipratropium bromide — and by the time I got here, Ebony’s breathing had improved substantially. Not enough to take her off the facemask, but when she wakes up I will tell her that she looks like a sexy pilot in a jet fighter plane.
Vitaly is here, giving her a ultrasound to examine her liver, kidneys, stomach/abdomen and lungs. The room is silent but for Ebony’s breathing as her Mother and I watch the images on the screen.
The silence is broken when he has finished and her her roommate — name unknown — gets a visitor. They are old-school New Yorkers and sound like they would have been burglary victims on Barney Miller.
He is a bit loud and he makes calls to her friends and to each one he says, “Guess who I’ve got sitting next to me?” like he’s about to announce the celebrities on “Dancing with the Stars.” Then she gets on the phone and gives her pain history for 10 minutes then complains about the hospital food. Ebony gets to sleep through this.
Her mother just told me that her aunts, having been out visiting other relatives would not be able to stay overnight tonight. I’m a little disappointed because I could use a proper night’s sleep but they’re leaving tomorrow and I don’t have to go to work for 15 weeks so I am loathe to complain. Plus, if Ebony wakes up, I’ll be here and if anyone neglects her, I will raise Holy Hell because all this hospital stuff in the last 3 1/2 years has made me that super-annoying Patient Advocate prick and I am sure my mother would be disappointed in me but when it comes to Ebony, I do not suffer fools gladly, or quietly.
Mostly everyone here is really good and I am so tremendously grateful for the care she is receiving and the good people who look after the patients as if they were family. There are some real doozies, though. Last night one of the Neuro team residents stopped by — she’s a Millennial who ends her definitive sentences with an inflection that makes them sound like questions. She came by to tell me what Dr Navi has already told us and when I brought up the incident about Ebony bleeding after Aziza had swabbed her nose (checking for MURSA, apparently), she began to argue and moved the focus away from her breathing and I felt like she was trying to distract me from the problem at hand. This was made worse by her rebuttals ending with inflections until I lost it and asked her if she knew what defenestration is.
Thankfully, the people on today — Taylor, Marique— we’re great. I am waiting to see who comes on in the next half hour.
Ebony is still sleeping and is expected to sleep through the night. Her roommate is watching a marathon of “Family Feud” right now and I may have to ask for some painkillers for myself. One of the questions was, “One hundred people surveyed, top eight answers are on the board. Name a word that rhymes with Jump.”
It is amazing how I can be at one of the best health care facilities in North America yet feel like it is actively making me ill.
Once again, I reaffirm my position: all hospitals should have a bar.
