crisis

I'm telling this without asking him if he minds. Because right now, I don't really fucking care if he minds. (edit: I wrote this a week ago, he has since said no restrictions.)

Pneumonia. Of course it's way more complicated than that. This is a man who comes from a line of folk who are generally healthy and long lived. This is also a man who joined me in an artistic pursuit that did not offer the benefit of health insurance. This is a man who wouldn't have gone to the doctor anyway even if he had had insurance. This is a 71 year old man who had only been to the doctor a handful of times in over 40 years. And not once since getting on medicare, health insurance for the first time in our working lives. A lifelong smoker whose part of the creative process was sandblasting and plaster/silica mold making, who did use reasonable precautions whose breathing and lungs have been compromised for 6, 7 years? We all assumed it was from work, this state of his lungs but it turns out not so much. Turns out it is primarily because of his smoking. And I base that opinion on conversations with the doctors. It may change when he gets released from the hospital and starts going to a PC and a lung specialist but immediate diagnosis...entire left lung infected with pneumonia. Secondary diagnosis emphysema in both lungs from smoking, no obvious evidence of silicosis. The doctors in the hospital are concerned with getting rid of the pneumonia, the emphysema falls to the primary care physician or specialist. Cure the infection, then deal with the rest.

This is what I think, that Marc was feeling bad enough to quit smoking (4^th try, nicotine is heinous) about 5 weeks ago which he never bothered to mention until he started to crash the first weekend in February. He started to feel bad the last week of January, appetite sort of deserted him. By February 1st feeling worse. By the 3^rd looked terrible and increasingly breathless, would still not entertain the idea of going to a doctor, clinic, or hospital no matter how many times I suggested it. Saturday the 4th felt scared enough to say he would call a doctor on Monday. Dude, he's just going to tell you to go to the hospital. Sunday could barely sit up, very labored breathing, instability, pain when coughing, mental fogginess, and the cherry on top, incontinence and still refusing to get help. Called our daughter to come back me up...you can get in the car or I can call an ambulance. Those are your choices.

He got in the car.

By the time we got to the emergency room of the hospital in Bay City, he could barely get out of the car into a wheelchair. Sarah wheeled him in while I parked the car. They were on him like a duck on a june bug, wheeled him back to triage before he was even completely registered. Seemed like half a dozen nurses and techs swarmed in and were hooking him up 9 ways to Sunday...oxygen, IVs, checking vitals, starting fluids, drawing blood, X-ray and CAT scan, EKG, and with the first blood test result, low kidney function. The doctor came in before they were even finished hooking him all up, quizzing Sarah and I. Before he sent him off for the chest X-ray he said 'Don't know what we will find, but it won't be good.

Well, we already knew that.

The doctor came back after the X-ray, his entire left lung was encased in infection, basically completely whited out in the X-ray but the CAT scan did not show a mass hiding under the infection, about the only good news of the day.

As soon as they had all that done they took him to the ICU.

More to come.