ER visit

Andy is getting worse. He is weak, unable to stand unassisted. He’s drinking some water and small amount of protein drinks, nowhere near what he should be taking in. His voice is quiet and he isn’t enunciating. He’s starting to sound like a combination of his normal voice and Brian Wilson imitation voice. He occasionally says things that don’t make sense, like “We’ve gotta get some water down the duck’s throat,” and “Can you look at Seymour’s bed situation?”

He was so much worse today that I talked to the boys and told them he may not get better. I told them that we don’t know the prognosis or what to expect from the treatments, and we won’t know until we meet with the oncologist, and that if he does get worse there may be a time that he can’t communicate as well as he does now. And that if they were anything they wanted to tell him, they should tell him now.

They spent an hour or two with him. It was a good visit. But he was starting to have trouble telling stories, and didn’t seem quite right to me, so I used the pulse ox and discovered his blood oxygen level was 87 and his heart rate was 125, which is go to the ER level, so I called 911. Violet took the boys home, Sarah and I followed the ambulance to the hospital, and Jonathan met us there.

The ER doc wanted to admit Andy but we begged him to figure out something else. If Andy is admitted, he cannot see the oncologist, and if he can’t see the oncologist, he can’t get Keytruda, the immunotherapy that is probably the best shot at giving him more time.

Eventually, it was decided Andy could spend the night in the ER, so he’s not admitted to the hospital. In the morning, they will try to find him an acute live-in facility so he can go there as an outpatient and get to the 9 a.m. oncology appointment on Monday.

They aren’t sure that will work, but it seems like the best shot in this broken medical system.

It seems almost impossible to believe this chapter started just two short weeks ago in this same emergency room. The doctor who treated Andy then was here tonight and he seemed to be the one trying to help us, pushing back on the doc who wanted to admit Andy, and pushing for the compromise where Andy can spend the night in the ER.

I’m exhausted and going to sleep and hoping to wake up to okay news (I’d hope for good news but that seems out of reach at this point).