Still Has Pneumonia

It was a day of hoping and expecting to get out of the hospital, but in the end, he is still in this bed. Not because he got worse, but because the system foiled us.

This morning, when the attending came to see Jon, he said, I want you out of here. I want you back in IPOP. There is nothing we are doing for you here that we can't do there, and patients do better when they are not in the hospital. He went on to say that he was the one who created that clinic 30 years ago and he really believes it is the best place for people to get better.

We knew it wouldn't be quick because it always takes a while for them to deal with all the discharge details. One of those details was organizing a way for Jon to be on oxygen until he doesn't need it anymore. He cannot breathe well enough without it. 

In fact, at the end of the day, Jon is not better than he was this time yesterday, from what we can see. But some of his blood counts are better than they were and maybe that's part of what gave the doctor the confidence to say he should move on out.

It took until about 6 PM for the mobile oxygen unit to arrive, but because there was ongoing confusion between Kaiser and Hopkins about when Jon might be going home, they couldn't make a plan for where the home oxygen tank would be delivered. His case worker thought he was here for 30 days, Jon thought we would be here until Day 14 at the earliest (today is Day 13), someone else thought he was staying until Monday. In any case, no one has said he can go home at all yet. He is still coughing and feeling bad. 

The reason they didn't let him go home tonight is there is no clear answer for where that oxygen tank will be sent. This is so frustrating to Jon, but he says he thought about what I always say about not trying to manage everything himself, especially when they are going to do what they are going to do because that's the way it works... and he didn't argue. He isn't going to be able to show them a new way of thinking. They need to know where the patient will be when the tank arrives, and no one knows because there is no answer yet. 

Meanwhile, Anna drove up to visit and have dinner with me. We didn't want to go out of the hospital, just in case Jon did get discharged, so we had a dinner of glorified rice and beans, ordered through GrubHub even though the food was right there and the servers were standing there. We had to use a screen to order and then I needed a code to liberate the not-hot-enough bowls from the locked cubicles. Honestly.  Once there is a system that accommodates all the people who want to swoop in from afar and do some QR code thing and never speak to anyone, that system is not able to allow the customer to order from the human in front of her. It was nice to see Anna and have a visit. Of course she saw someone in the cafeteria she knew from her grad school days and she made a professional connection, because that's who she is. Anna is a force to be reckoned with. It was very good to see her.

I am sure they will sort this out tomorrow. But what we all hope more than that is that Jon's pneumonia gets better. He seemed stronger and better today for the most part, but he is not well, that's for sure. And we are starting to see that we won't be home before the weekend and all that snow. 

One day at a time. I think I upset a lot of people with yesterday's report.  Today was better, in spite of how it ended. And if the doctors think he is improving, based on some other metric, maybe he is.