27 feb 02
things aren’t particularly good. i’m still down in Sarasota, and Grandma isn’t doing too well. i was encouraged yesterday when she seemed responsive when i came in, but today brought some bad news. she was less responsive and just mostly slept. a slew of doctors visited the room, including the primary attending physician, a heart surgeon, a cardiologist, an eye doctor, an infectious disease specialist, and a neurologist. maybe even more, i don’t know. they say that the staph has infected her heart and that the “vegetative growths” have damaged (and continue to damage) her valves. in the words of the cardiologist, this is “very serious.”
the only hope now would be for the antibiotics to do their job and then for Grandma to have open heart surgery to replace the valve. that would be followed by a long period of recovery, i think. the family seems pessimistic about the chances for a full recovery.
these past couple of days have been weightless, in a way. they’ve been odd, and without order and groundedness. i don’t know. it’s hard to explain.
i had a good feeling about this before. i was talking to my dad about it. then we came up from lunch and the bad news about her heart came.
unrelated: i wrote the entry for the ICRF convention weekend.