The way home

Linda, my new nurse came in the next morning and started taking off some of the devices placed on me the night before. Off came the oxygen mask, off came one of the IV's and blessedly, off came the bp cuff that had swelled my right arm up huge and made it look like their were purple flames running up from the elbow. Anita couldn't stand the sight of my arm. I was just happy to have some of the restraints off. I still had the art line in my left wrist, the foley and the central line out of my chest. That was enough. My fever never seemed to rise above 102 much, so I didn't have to don the blanket again. Now it was up to many docs comming in to give their opinions. Internal med docs, hematologists, dermatologists, infectious disease docs. They all came to one opinion. That it is very unlikely that this is anything but a severe drug reaction to the Augmentin. This is good news for me...that endotoxins were out of the equation. I spent the rest of the day into the next in the ICU with mostly just me and Anita. My parents were very relieved when they returned to find me stronger and getting better. Linda had brought Anita a more comfortable chair to recline on and that made me feel a lot better.
So now it was recovery. Lots of steroids and saline. I even started to eat some although the hospital food was really terrible. I mean a sandwich was two slices of white bread and a slab of processed turkey....that is it. Happy lunch. Steriods made me crazy at night. I woke up hallucinating like Russell Crowe. I was certain that things were happening for about 5 minutes each time. It was scary once I was trying to rip out my iv's.
I did find that once they moved me out of ICU, I needed to go. I needed good food and rest and this was not the place. Anita may have needed these things more than me at this point as well. There was a lot of worry about her health now as well.
We ended up going up north, and as would be expected, my mother gave us all the r and r we could handle.