Alarming stuff

    I got a call this morning that my dad had passed a restless night, that he was breathing about 40 times per minute, that his oxygen saturation was hovering around 92% and that his lips were going blue/purple. Staff wanted to know if it was OK for him to go to the emergency room. I resisted the temptation to say, "Ya think?" and gave the goahead for him to go to Baptist. They said they would call when he was under way.
    When they did, I ate a sort of lunch (since it takes almost an hour even for an ambulance to get from Lowman to Baptist) and headed to the ER. I was very apprehensive, but he looked good. The doctors were mostly reassuring. The chest x-ray showed that he had a lot of fluid in his right lung and also in his right chest. All he needed, they said, was more dialysis. So I waited with him while he got further tests and they got him set up for dialysis.
    As this went on, his oxygen saturation started falling again, alarming me a lot. But finally, they had him a room in the ICU. (You have to have a room to have dialysis even though you go to the hospital's dialysis facility rather than it coming to you; makes no sense, but there you go.) First, they were going to use a BiPAP machine to get as much fluid as possible out of his lungs. Hopefully, between that and the dialysis, he'll be a lot better. Hopefully, someday he gets fed, too. Helluva day he's had. As I type, he's probably halfway through the dialysis session.
    Even before this, I was going to write today about fairly alarming stuff about Dad, although it seems mild now. When we arrived yesterday, he threw the blankets off and was trying to get up, saying that he thought he could pee. He hasn't walked in weeks and probably wouldn't be able to do that, let alone pee. (He hasn't made pee in a long time, although he still did for the first couple of years of dialysis.) I assume that he was dreaming. He was attached to an oxygen machine, so trying to go to the bathroom would have been fairly disastrous regardless. I pointed out that he was in a diaper; if he could pee, he should just go ahead and do so. Eventually, he calmed down, I guess. I just hope he doesn't get further ideas to go walking when we aren't around.