My Uncle Don is still in the hospital. This is what I know... He is still in ICU. He is breathing on his own. He still has a feeding tube. He is no longer sedated, but he is considered to be in ICU psychosis. He is saying really weird shit and has very brief moments of clarity. He is supposedly hallucinating. He has a bed alarm on in case he tries to move. He also has some kind of gloves on so that he can't pull out any of the tubes he's hooked up to. He has always had a mental handicap, but it has never been diagnosed so no one really knows how to properly describe the condition of his state of mind. He is convinced the doctors and nurses are trying to kill him because he knows my grandpa (his dad) died in a hospital. Now the biggest concern is that he is experiencing irregular heart beats (Afib). The doctors have already suggested that heart surgery may be necessary. The same heart surgery my grandpa died while trying to recover from. I think my dad and his twin might have to make a difficult decision regarding heart surgery because my grandma does not want to make that decision knowing that's what killed her husband. Prior to Don's hospital visit, we were already aware that his heart valves weren't functioning at full capacity.
My grandma has been on a bunch of medication for whatever the heck is ailing her. The doctors couldn't give a clear diagnosis (I seriously hate health care! Does anyone ever get any real answers?). I actually visited her yesterday. It seems she has aged a lot in the past few weeks. While she's trying to get better, it is obvious that she is taking Don's hospitalization pretty hard. She blames herself for not getting him to the doctor sooner because she thought he just had a cold. It's hard for her to see Don in his current state of psychosis, but she still visits him everyday at the hospital.
My dad is not a very emotional person. Even though he is not affectionate, I get choked up to see how much effort he is putting forth to visit Don and making sure my grandma is taken care of. My dad was telling me that when Don started going off on one of his crazy rants the other day, he started tickling Don's feet...which made Don start laughing and stop talking crazy. I thought that was a sweet gesture of love.
