Life of Brian

I haven’t blogged much about the actual reason we are in the hospital for several reasons, Donna isn’t as excited to share the intimate details as I would be, the spotty internet connection and the lack of free time allotted the assistant lay nurse of a sick person. But I will shared my favorite story of the past week. Treatment for her type of colitis is the steroid solu-cortef. The steroid amps you up and in Donna’s case on the second day kind of turned her into a 5-year old kid with a case ADD. To counter act this the doctor proscribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety medicine, and it has calmed her some, but not entirely.

While on the clear liquid diet she was drinking all sorts of fluids, but she always kept her favorite three at hand on the bed table, water, cranberry juice and diet ginger ale. Each fluid had its own little styrofoam cup which she would have me write the fluids name in three or four places along the top edge of the cup. She would line them up in a straight line formation. Directly behind the cup marked water was the large hospital supplied plastic mug which the staff kept full of ice and water, directly behind the ginger ale was the small 8oz can of soda and lastly right behind the cranberry juice glass were stacked the 4oz plastic containers of juice. Each cup had its own separate straw. After each drink from the cups, sometimes one right after the other, she carefully arrange them back in straight lines.

This morning after we got all the cups arranged and filled with the appropriate combination of fluid and ice she looked down at the row of drinks and frowned. When she looked up at me I asked, “What’s wrong?” She looked at me and said, “My straws don’t match.” Sure enough, there were two yellow straws and one white one. I went over to her neatly arranged bed stand picked out a matching yellow straw.

You already seen my two favorite snow day pictures, but because I can I posted most of the rest of them in a new gallery online, Aiken’s 2010 Snow Day