It’s all good news on the Ken front.
On the same day that we posted our last update, we received an actual honest-to-goodness email from Ken, who certainly wasn’t short of things to complain about. The short of the matter is that he’s in a hurry to get out of the hospital and back home. We replied by sending him an email explaining that now we’ve seen he can write emails and all, we’re accepting no more excuses. We want a column and we want it now.
Just kidding. What we really want is for Ken to do whatever he needs to do to regather his strength.
Early this afternoon, we received another email from Ken’s friend Ed, which includes a little story which illustrates how much he’s getting back to normal…back to normal for Ken, that is.
Had a good day Thursday, had a swallow test, had him up walking, his spirits are good, still using the trache tube for breathing and no word yet how long that will be. Yeah, yeah, the weak and sickly and pitiful guy in the hospital with the surgical [stuff] we’ve been worrying about is getting better and all that.
And then there’s the Ken that said, “Cover me, I’m going in.” Remember that guy?
So Thursday morning, Diane is there and he’s been letting her know his stuff on his whiteboard, and then outa nowhere he tells her to ask them to bring her a cup of coffee. She’s not a big coffee drinker and doesn’t want to cause them a lot of trouble, but he tells her again. So she pushes the button and asked for it, cream and sugar.
Somebody brings it to her and she drinks a little of it. It takes a while for it to cool, so she sets it down and drinks some more. Then he asks her for something and she sets the coffee down and he picks it up and drinks it. Says he’s studying for his swallow test.
Anybody wanna kill him? [We’re figuring this to be a rhetorical question.]
Well, the good news is the Ken we know is back and getting a lot better. The bad news is that if nothing happens, they’re going to throw him out Saturday and Diane is going to have to put up with him at home.
Diane’s daughter-in-law, Roxanne, is there for another week, I think, so she’ll have some reinforcements for a while. Nobody asked me, but it seems like if he can steal her coffee, he ought to be able to drink the Ensure or Boost or whatever they whip up and get rid of the feeding tube. That would be one less thing for Diane to deal with.
He will still have the trache tube and will still need breathing treatments with the nebulizer and have [stuff] suctioned out. Diane got pretty good at doing those last time he came out of the hospital, so she isn’t worried about those.
Unless something bad happens, which we don’t expect, our next update on Ken’s condition will be posted after he goes home. He’s probably getting sick and tired of us broadcasting his personal [stuff] by now.
